Ortigia to Palermo.

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With our train not scheduled until 2:15 we checked out of our lodgings but left our luggage there while we explored. The castle at the south end of the island was open and featured a somewhat abstract art display. From there we returned to the Piazza of the Duomo to discover that an adjacent church was finally open after being closed the previous days. On displays were replicas of and tributes of the Caravaggio painting we had seen earlier.

Picking up our luggage we arrived at the station in plenty of time for our train trip to Catania airport. Exiting the train there we discovered that our connection to Palermo had been cancelled as had all future trips that day. With no one there to explain the situation we were debating our options when a bus showed up as a replacement. The original 3 hour trip dragged out to 4+ hours as we detoured into various small stations em route to drop off and pick up passengers. It was close to 7:30pm when we finally bused it from the Central Station to our lodgings for the next 5 days. The owner had gone home by then but left us entry codes and door cards for our room- a large 2 bedroom suite on the first floor.

Somewhat exhausted we quickly cleaned up and found a decent restaurant within a short distance where we we ate more out of necessity than desire.

 Sunday morning we rise early to join a bus tour which took us to an ancient site, Segesta, which featured a temple and a partially restored amphitheatre, some 1.5km apart. A bus took us to the amphitheatre and surrounding ruins after which we walked back to the temple and entrance. 

From there our trip took us to the salt flats of Trapani for a tour of a small salt museum.

From there, a lengthy and winding climb brought us to the hilltop town of Erice where we visited several churches and wandered the streets for a couple of hours. It being Sunday the town was rather quiet as it appeared that a good number of the shops were closed. The views from the town over the adjacent areas were rather spectacular although the weather was considerably cooler and very windy compared to the valley below.

The return trip to Palermo coincided with a fairly heavy rainfall which reduced traffic to a crawl. The rain continued for much of the night and into Monday morning as we joined a very soggy mass of cruise ship passengers for a walk into the city’s old centre.

 By the afternoon the clouds had lifted and the sun came out, drying everything off and bringing the temperatures back into the high 20’s.

 As expected the Quattro Conti (four corners) 

was filled with masses of tourists competing for space so we escaped to visit an adjacent church. Closed on our previous visit due to a wedding, the Santa Maria dell Amiraglio proved to be an incredible show piece with the entire church decorated with baroque artwork and various Byzantine mosaics.

 Leaving there we wandered through the Capo Market, the main produce market in town, picking up some pears and grapes for our “evening snacks”

Dinner was at a popular local restaurant where I enjoyed my first steak if the trip while Susanna struggled to put a dent in a large portion of rotisserie chicken, twice the size and half the price of a similar offering at Swiss Chalet, the somewhat similar Canadian franchise. Luckily we were able to ditch the usual eggplant and zucchini side dish for a hefty portion of grilled zucchini and some incredibly large mushrooms.