I meant to write about my wonderful trip to Palermo and Mondello with my lovely companion, Lauren, weeks ago but, alas, I got all wrapped in saying good-bye to Italia, etc and am two trips behind. So here we go.
The last weekend in November, Lauren and I flew so far south we ended up in a land form reminiscent of a soccer ball, namely Sicily. We arrived in the capital, Palermo, in the evening and it was quite an adventure finding our hostel. There were two streets with the same name and the one that the hostel was on was not the first street we found with this name. And lets just say that Palermo is not the least sketchy place you could find yourself on a dark Friday evening. FINALLY we found it, after many strange looks from locals and a few markets later. We arrived and climbed the stairs to our room which was seemingly unoccupied. We then left and scouted out dinner at a seemingly traditional Sicilian restaurant where Lauren made sure to order a Sicilian pasta specialty, something with eggplant. This restaurant was a typical experience of not knowing whether or not you had to go up to the cashier to pay or whether they would take your check at your table, after spending an acceptable Italian amount of time lounging at your dinner table. Afterwards we scouted out some typical Sicilian cannolis, which have a ricotta based filling and our scrumptious and native to this island at a fancy schmancy dessert/aperitivo place. When we arrived back to our room at our hostel we met our roommate.
"BUONANOTTE" she said in the scariest, raspiest, worst smoker voice combined with darth vader breathing ever. She continued to mumble stuff at us as Lauren and I tried not to burst out laughing until we figured out she wanted us to close the door because she was trying to sleep at 9 pm. We left very quickly because we were both terrified and trying not to laugh hysterically. Horrible. We then went out for a bit but around 3 am, when we were back and trying to sleep, this crazy woman got up, turned on the lights (there was another person in there in addition to Lauren and I, therefore turning the lights on for 3 other people) and started packing up her stuff to go. She took off her pants and did this all in white underwear, and often right in front of Lauren's bed...aka her face. This took a while. She dragged all her stuff to right outside the room, rummaged around, came back in, talked to herself in her scary voice, breathed like Darth Vader, went back into the hallway, would be gone for like 15 minutes, come back in, and do the whole thing over. Everytime someone turned off the lights when she was gone or closed the window shutter she would come in, turn the light on, and open up the window shutter. It was horrible. I thought she would never leave.
Finally she did and it was morning and around noon Lauren and I emerged from our beds and headed out and into Palermo. It was wonderfully pleasant outside, a welcome change from the Milanese chills, and we got nutella crepes for breakfast/lunch. What could be better? Then we headed to the markets. Wow, the markets. I think I could do a study on the varying degrees of merchandise and ethnic influences in the different regions of Italy and how this effects the markets. In Sicily there is a strong Indian influence that I hadn't seen before except maybe a smidgen in Bologna. It was really great and probably the best for present shopping for all you lovely girls back home. We spent a good portion of the day doing that. We also walked to the coast and stared longingly and thoughtfully at the water for a while, ate some mini Sicilian pizza (which is different from pizza in Naples, Milan, and everywhere else), had some more cannolis, walked by the super "shameful" aka nude and sexy Fontana della Vergogna, and popped into and walked the duomo (which is a medley of styles since Sicily is a land conquered by two many dictators/rulers/historical names to count).
On Sunday Lauren and I decided to take a day trip to Mondello which is a town a little bit outside Palermo on the coast. We checked out of our hostel and hopped on a bus to the town. It was very small, made up of mostly seafood restraunts, and at first quite windy and a bit chilly. We checked out the bright blue rowboats and walked past a weird mini child amusement park until the sun came out. Then we did the natural thing and plopped ourselves down on the sand, stretched out, and sometimes touched the cold, cold water. This was so great. Last weekend in November, gearing up for finals, and where were we? Lying on a beach in Sicily. After a while we figured it would be good not too miss our plane back to northern Italy and grabbed some late lunch, mid afternoon meal before getting on the bus back to Palermo so we could get to the airport. Now this is the story of how we almost got arrested. Usually, in Milan and other places in Italy, validating your bus ticket or tram ticket is an honor system kind of deal. You don't enter it into a machine in order to board like you do in Chicago. So basically its really easy to board without paying. Since Lauren and I didn't know where to buy tickets or anything, and we just needed two bus rides, we didn't buy tickets. Silly, cheap, American college students we are. Of course on our ride back from Mondello, conductors come on to check tickets. We tried to play stupid American. They just wanted to write down our passport numbers. We told them we didn't speak Italian. They insisted on a 53 euro fine for each of us. One of the street vendors who spoke English acted as a translator for us. He was actually very nice and tried to see if the conductors would let us free if we just bought the extra tickets he had from him. But the conductors insisted that this was not an okay option either, we needed to buy them before boarding. These conductors were so mean. They talked so quickly that neither Lauren nor I could make out the seperate words from the stream of Italian jumble exiting their lips. I would say "Por favore-" meaning to end with "parla lentemente" (speak slowly) but they would interrupt me with "no no blah blah no no blah blah" and hand gestures as soon as I opened my mouth. Horrible. They finally ended up escorting us off the bus, kept mentioning the "Polizia" and argued with us for a bit longer. Lauren and I were petrified. We were not going to pay 53 euro each, we were not letting them get our passport information. Luckily we were close enough to downtown Palermo that when we got off the bus, we knew where we were and how to get to the airport shuttle. We walked to the shuttle still nervous and were very happy to get on that plane out and over to Milano.
