A curate’s egg? Some parts of it were good, some bits less so… As you will know from the last post, we lost a whole week, due to Etna eruptions, all very sad. We ended up with just a week’s holiday. A flight to Palermo, four days in nearby Cefalu, and three days in Palermo itself. It was a bit unbalanced, because Battleaxe had planned for a week’s relaxation in a nice hotel right by the sea in Giardini Naxos, before throwing ourselves, hopefully suitably refreshed, into the urban jungles. But as it was, we were straight in there… and feeling very tired and stressed even before we started…
Cefalu is quite a small town, dominated by its Arab/Norman Duomo, complete with world-famous Byzantine mosaics. We had booked the Cathedral Palace Apartment, right by the cathedral – the only apartment of the trip. Well, Cefalu might have been small, but crikey was it full of tourists. But let’s do the good bits first…
Our apartment was really lovely, at the quiet, top end of the Piazza del Duomo, in a old Palazzo, with the huge entrance door, marble stairs etc. It was very large, with a long corridor to reach the kitchen in the bowels of the building. It belonged to two academics – Professore Giovanni something and Dottore Antonino something, and was full of books, art on the walls etc. Here are a few photos.
Below the apartment was a really pleasant, quiet, atmospheric restaurant. Quite expensive, but we ate there on two nights. We made one mistake in ordering an octopus starter – a truly horrible tentacle complete with suckers appeared in front of us. We could barely eat it, and generally Battleaxe avoids octopus – they are too intelligent. I didn’t take a picture of the actual dish but the tentacle looked just like this… urgh…
I bought a pottery octopus from a lovely ceramics shop we found – the whole family was sitting inside busy making things. Even an ancient granny was rolling little balls of clay into perfect spheres. Generally though, the town was totally, continually rammed, the narrow streets full of tat shops. Cefalu is a seaside town, but the beaches were so crowded we couldn’t face fighting our way onto any of them. So, a whole holiday passed without one single swim in the gorgeous blue Med… Just down from our apartment, the Piazza del Duomo turned into a heaving mass of people in tat restaurants and bars, plus pounding pop music. You could hear far too much with our balcony windows open, but fortunately virtually nothing when they were shut. The Duomo itself was attractive and interesting, but apart from that, there was little to see… Four days was too long. As you can probably already tell, sssh, don’t tell anyone, I didn’t actually like Cefalu that much, even though it is on the obligatory Sicily ‘must see’ list.
Things were not improved for me by one day in the Duomo being apparently given over to funerals. The passing bell tolled sonorously, then the processions appeared… the priests and groups of men in black suits accompanying the coffin across the piazza in front of us. It was very interesting, but I would rather have had weddings!
On our last day we did manage a walk out into more open country. Relief.
We caught a train to Palermo – no trouble. Battleaxe was dreading it a bit because I had read that Palermo is one of the wildest and most chaotic cities in Europe, but I was pleasantly surprised. Had booked the Hotel Politeama, which is up the quieter end of the city. Our room overlooked the Piazza Garibaldi and its huge theatre.
The streets round about were elegant, wide and spacious, lined with high-end designer shops – more like Milan… and we had no trouble in finding peaceful little restaurants and coffee places. All the tourists seemed to jam themselves further down the city, round the Duomo, and after one abortive trip to try and see the Norman Palace – although we had tickets we didn’t actually make it in there – we avoided the tourist areas altogether. Oh, except we walked though a street market – the Mercato del Capo, which was more like a North African souk than a European market. The traffic was pretty much like Cairo – crossing the main streets was a challenge. However, we soon learned that although the traffic looked terrifying, and there was much hooting and shouting, the drivers were non-threatening – it was live and let live, more like India, I guess. Here are a few random photos…
On our second day we went to the magnificent Teatro Massimo. Unfortunately no operas were on, so we saw a ballet, ‘La Bella Addormentata’, or the Sleeping Beauty. Well, the theatre was amazing – one of the largest in Europe.
but the production was like no Sleeping Beauty I’ve ever seen. It was a ‘radical reinterpretation’ based on a 2024 Salzburger Landestheatre production. Think the awakening of eroticism and sexuality…Gone was the spindle, the forest thicket etc… gone were the handsome suitors – this lot were a shambolic crowd of extremely camp down-and-out junkies with very bad wigs.
Gone was the corps de ballet… the cast was pared down… A very gender-bending Carabosse pranced round ferociously in a fetish corset… Aurora was sexy and knowing… Here is a sort of review of the production. The theatre was packed – mostly with the older great and good of Palermo society. I think they must, like us, have been pretty taken aback – the applause was a bit luke-warm. Philosopher doesn’t much go for ballet anyway, and his appreciation was not improved by the choreographer still keeping to classical ballet moves. All the leaping about seemed more than a little anachronistic. Anyway, I’m glad we went to the theatre and wouldn’t have missed it for anything!
Next day, we went to the Capuchin Catacombs. The bus trip to get there was something else – through the outskirts of Palermo and some of the worst slummy areas I have ever seen. Not old slums – dilapidated 60s/70s apartment blocks… the bus didn’t stop where we wanted it to so we had a long walk along tracks that would scarcely count as streets… Fortunately Philosopher and Battleaxe are made of strong stuff…
There are over 8000 bodies hung up in those catacombs – some dressed-up skeletons, some half-embalmed. Monks, men, women, children. Have never seen anything like it. There were so many bodies they were actually not macabre at all… We couldn’t face looking for the bus stop again so got a taxi back to the city centre – 30 euros! Then we ended up in an art gallery which wasn’t actually a gallery at all but an incredibly pretentious and expensive selling shop. They had a Chinese glass paperweight – just like ones I had taken to the Car Boot sale and sold for 50p – on sale at 76 euros!
As you can begin to see, Palermo was totally bonkers. Think a cross between Milan, Calcutta, Cairo and Hastings on LSD. I loved it…
One thing though, the weather was unseasonably hot, and very humid…
Travelling back was straightforward but Palermo airport is far too small and was rammed. I had to queue getting on for half an hour to get to the loo…
So, we are home. As you can tell, not very restful but very interesting and enjoyable.
