Weekend Update

The Sicily tour was such a blast that I wasn't really psyched up for the Southern Italy tour. A small tiny part of my brain was saying "time to go home." But I decided I'd just have to Buck Up and deal with it. Are you feeling even the teeniest bit sorry for me? Absolutely not! We found a self-service laundry place and cleaned all our clothes. What a great feeling - clean clothes! That helped to reset my attitude a bunch. On the way back to our hotel we noticed hordes of people walking towards us. Then the crowd parted and a wall of Carbineri in riot gear coming towards us followed by a massive crowd of protesters chanting in Italian. They were students up in arms about something. We quickly took a side street and dodged the wave of people. Throughout the weekend we ran into several people from our tour group who hadn’t left town yet. We had dinner with Harry, Don, Ron, and Roni on Friday. We all got one more dose of Sicilian pizza and gelato. I went for cheese & salami on my pizza and hazelnut and pistachio for my gelato. I know, I’m in a rut…I’ll just have to buck up. On Saturday we got brave and jumped on a local bus down to the Ortico Botanico (botanic gardens) which were a shady respite from the city. It was empty of anyone else except for wild cats and us. Walking back up into the city we ended up at the Archaeological Museum where Boneless Rabbit got some close up culture... Then we wandered down along the water front and looked for a boat called “Noah”. We found some great little bars tucked into alleys that served a plate full of antipasti for 5 Euro... it was great. Blogging Italian style... Even more bravery on Sunday took us out of town to Mondelo with Ron and Roni which is ’the’ beach resort that Palermo escapes to on weekends. We got to walk among the beautiful people, have a great meal at a restaurant along the water - absolutely succulent fried calamari and spaghetti with pesto and fresh shrimp, and dip our toes in the clear waters. The line up - Roni, me, and Ron... Ted & Ron enjoying the view... Guess who took this picture? You got it... The beautiful people... Later we found this great chocolate/espresso bar - what could be better than that? Love this stuff Really good weekend…Palermo was very cool. Ok, we're off to Rome... Chow!