The original plan for departing Sicily was to take a ferry over to the Italian mainland then dash across to the Adriatic and take a ferry across to Albania to begin a bit of a Balkan adventure. However while sitting in a park in Catania I'd realized that all of the transportation involved in doing this was actually pretty pricy. While looking for alteratives I discovered 16€ flights from Palermo to Bucharest in a few days time. This would let us throw in a quick visit to Romania where we kind of wanted to go anyway, would save lots of money getting there and as a bonus would give us a couple more days in Palermo, our favourite city in Sicily. Done.
The trip from Giardini Naxos to Palermo went up the eastern side of Sicily via Messina. As you travelled up the coast, Calabria on the Italian mainland was easily visible across the strait. This route meant that we'd done an almost complete circuit of the island save for the far west. On arriving in Palermo we were sorely tempted to pop into Taverna Azzura, but it was getting late and we'd already changed our arrival time twice with our host, so decided we'd leave it 'til the next day.
The next day we had a visit to the biggest and best of Sicily's street markets to obtain picnic supplies. Some more of those fabulous cherry tomatoes, great big green olives, a super-salty, crumbly baked ricotta, some bread and a bottle of prosecco (not really a product of Sicily, but we hadn't had any yet in Italy, and this was our last chance. We had plans to take our picnic to the outlying town (suburb really) of Monreale in the hills above Palermo. But when we just missed the bus and discovered the next one didn't leave for 90 minutes we decided to just plonk ourselves down in the park in front of the Sicilian parliament. This was made somewhat more complicated when I read the park rules sign and it said "no picnics outside of designated areas". Apparently super popular tourist towns in Italy (Florence, Venice, Rome) have started to ban eating in their most popular public spaces to reduce litter and the sheer numbers of people occupying them for extended periods (and presumably to boost the revenues of nearby restaurants). We actually went to the trouble of asking a policewoman and she said something to the effect of "go ahead but don't be a dick about it".
We had a long casual stroll home after this past the cathedral and the lovely pedestrianised XXx. This gave us time for a wee nap before making our return pilgrimage to Taverna Azzura. We arrived around seven and spent about six hours watching the crowd first grow and then heave around us. We had two made-to order pizzas ourselves (up 'til now we'd just had the slices and mini-pizzas from the cabinet) and they were well up to standard, perhaps even better. Overall champion was the Pizza xxxFolded with rocket, gorgonzola, tomato sauce and mushroom. I think it's going to be a while until I can bring myself to eat any other pizza (in fact, since I'm writing this well after the fact I can say that it's been three weeks and I'm just starting to consider it).
We had a few Moretti lagers and Sarah a couple plastic cups of sweet Vino Zibbibo. Taverna Azzura had glasses, but it seemed like only regulars (or people who looked more responsible than us?) got to take them out into the alley where the vast majority of eating and drinking was done. Turned out to be no bad thing, as a homeless guy who we'd previously given a cup of beer to grabbed one out of Sarah's hand sending it splashing to the ground, stickyfying legs and hands in the process. Boo!
Even though our flight the next day wasn't until the late morning, we still had to show some semblance of sensibility, so with a heavy heart we said goodbye to Taverna Azzura and its deliciousness and headed home past the baroque and Arabo-Norman wonders of Palermo for one from final time.
Palermo's airport is a fair way out of town, but there are regular inexpensive express buses. Despite many (often justified) complaints about Ryanair when things go wrong (and when they do annoying stuff like charging €55 to print boarding passes… In what universe is that even vaguely proportional to the costs? Or even proportionate to any outcome it's meant to encourage? I suppose I shouldn't complain because it's the unfortunate buggers who end up paying these fees that allow people like Sarah and I to buy €16 tickets without driving the airline bankrupt). Anyhow, when things go smoothly as they did in Palermo, it's just fine. There was practically no queue and we had plenty of time to admire the spectacular mountainous backdrop to PMO while drinking our final airport beer for a while, a gift of homebrew from Gianluca (somewhat oxidised and autolysis-y, but actually still surprisingly pleasant for that).
Coming up next: arrival in Romania and the start of the Balkan leg of our trip.
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