I was so glad that we (ELA group), had already agreed to
have a weekend together when we were all back in Sicily. The promise of wine
and laughing was really the only thing that got me through the first 2 weeks
back after the Christmas holidays.
After a bit of debate, and a LOT of consulting the
trenitalia / various bus companies' websites, we settled on Palermo, as it was fairly easy for all of us
to get to, and somewhere that we all wanted to visit.
So, another Friday night, another creepy Sicilian train
station, then Katy, Laura and I reunited over a bottle of Nero D’Avola and headed out into the night to find food. We ended
up at the place on Via Venezia, which
is maybe not one of the prettiest places in Palermo (in fact it looks a lot
like a car park...), but the food was AMAZING. In fact, it was SO good that we
ate there 2 nights in a row. THAT GOOD.
It’s quite a small place, but full to the point where there are people queuing
out the door. The menu is simple, and printed on the paper tablecloths, with
maybe 3 antipasto options, 5 fish,
and 5 meat options. The service was fast, despite the place being so busy, and
the prices were really good. We shared antipasti and wine, and we each had our
own main courses, and we paid 40 euro between the 3 of us, and then we bought
nutella crepes from a stall in the street before heading back to the hostel for
a (relatively) early night.
On Saturday morning, Fiona and Ruari arrived, so we took
them to the hostel to drop off their bags, and went on a walking tour of
Palermo. We wandered around the ballarò, ran away from some dogs, saw the
Teatro Massimo and Teatro Politeama, we found H&M and Zara (sorry, Ruari!),
we drank a lot of coffee, and when we looked at how far we’d actually trekked
around Palermo, it was over 12km!
After a quick change at the hostel, we headed out in search
of aperitivo and eventually back to
the restaurant in Via Venezia, where
we ordered a whole load of food to share, which is easily the best way to eat
in this kind of place!
We then walked the short distance
to a piazza just off Via Roma that we’d
been told was the best place to go on a Saturday night. We ended up in a piazza,
surrounded by crumbling, derelict buildings, hundreds of people, makeshift bars
all around the edges of the square, and music blasting from who-knows-where. It
was bizarre, but brilliant. We huddled together, dancing and sipping awful
wine, exchanging looks that said “What the hell have we stumbled upon?” for a
while until we collectively agreed that we were all knackered from the day’s
activities and wandered back to the hostel.
Unfortunately, we realised the next
morning that Fiona’s purse had been stolen, which somewhat ruined the memory of
the night before.
We spent Sunday lazily café-hopping,
and browsing in Zara again, while we each filtered off to get our respective buses and trains
home. Finally, when we were just three again, waiting for Katy’s bus, I
insisted on a trip to the Gelateria di
Ciccio, where there’s a choice of at least 100 different flavours of gelato. It was the perfect way to end a
weekend of incessant munching.
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