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Palermo
Built over many centuries, Palermo's Duomo is a mixture of Norman, Muslim, Spanish, and Italian Architecture. Sorry to disappoint, but I read that in a book, I am not THAT good at architecture history. This, I must proudly say, is the first photograph I made (took, in Italian you make or do photographs, in English we take them..,) with my beloved pocket tripod. I place the camera and mini-tripod on a 5 foot wall, and that is on of the stone posts (I don't know what else to call it) in the top left corner...
Palermo
On our way home from dinner with my Traveling companions (Lindsey, Alysia, and Kristen) and the ladies from school that we had met ran into (Shannon, Jodie, and Annora) we passed an official looking building, perhaps a post office, which had a lot of steps and monumental columns on the front facade. I set up my baby tripod to take a picture and much to my dismay Jodi and Shannon Ran up and got into the picture. I took two pictures, one with a flash, and one without. The photograph taken without the flash looks very similar to the first one, but Jodi and Shannon are fuzzy because they were dancing around as the aperture was left open for a few seconds. I do not want to encourage them, but the picture turned out pretty neat. . .
Cefalu
Greg, Kristen, and I on a hike up to the city of Cefalu's "Roccia" or mountain fort. The day was gray and on our hike it rained a bit, but we got a nice view of the city along the way and a chance to hike around a bit.
Cefalu
The view from the town's Roccia . The white sand beach a little off center of the picture is where we left Alysia, Lindsey, and Nicole to sit in the sun and watch our bags. However, as we climbed it started to rain a bit. They found some cover under a large tent while we finished our hike. When we finished our hike, we watched the bags while the other ladies did the hike.
Cefalu
Left to Right: Alysia, Lindsey, me, Kristen, Nicole, and Greg.
Just before we took this picture, I was talking to an older, Sicilian man came up to us and started talking to us. He asked us where we were from, and I told him that we were studying in Firenze, but came from California. He said that California was "very good," and I agreed and told him that Italy was very good as well. He told me something like "you speak scholastic Italian" and I laughed because he was right. I do not know any slang or two many "modi di dire." After a little more small talk the man came closer to me and whispered to me: "A Cefalu, la Mafia," and then he made a hand gesture, and I said "non c'e'?" he said "tranquillo, tranquillo." I was not sure exactly what he meant, but I decided not to press the matter. . .
Cefalu
While walking to the beach, we passed some stairs with people walking up them, I assumed there was a church at the bottom. Lindsey went down to check it out and I followed Kristen and Alysia to tell them to wait for a minute or two while we looked around the church.
I returned to the church and I descended the gently turning stairs and found that it was not a church at all, it seemed to be something like ruins. I was to learn that it was an old clothes washing area. The stairs leading down to the area were tree lined and very nice. I set up my tripod and snapped this picture.
Agrigento
We caught the bus to the temples outside in front of the trains station and rode it to temples. Agrigento was perched on a hill and the temples were farther down the hillside. The bus wound its way down the hill and the first hint of the temples that we saw was a nearly complete temple silhouetted against the blue sky (it was a nice and sun, though a bit windy day, Greg had correctly predicted the weather in the hotel that morning).
We paid the entrance fee of a few thousand lire (reduced fee) for
the temples and began walking around the site. Alysia told us that this temple was to be dedicated to Zeus and was to have been quite large, though it was not completed. It was not terribly impressive, to be honest-until I saw what is above and the next couple of pictures...
Greg and Nicole walked ahead and I followed a few hundred meters away a corner of a Temple had been reconstructed. Around the piece there was literally a sea of fallen and broken columns. The stone used for the construction looked very porous and I could see sea shells embedded in the stone. I tried to take a close-up photograph, but it turned out blurry. I took a couple of photographs of this more interesting piece of Greek architecture and one of Lindsey, Nicole, and Kristen under (more like next to) some olive trees. The sky was quite blue and pretty, though as I said a little windy.
Sciacca
Dinner at a Bed & Breakfast in Sciacca (pronounced Sh-aw-Kaw, yes like Mr. Zulu...) The ladies were excellent cooks. The first night we had bread, bruschetta, spaghetti, fried flour stuff...I had not eaten so well in a while...The Bed and Breakfast was amazing, we each had our own bedroom, there were 2 bathrooms, 2 kitchens, a fireplace, TV, couch, fresh oranges, homemade tomato sauce, fresh eggs (with fresh chicken gunk), and parsley that was grown in the greenhouse of the family that ran the place. It cost $15 a night, per person.
