Here is our tour of Sicily, done in four locations shown on the following map (clickable links):

Palermo

The city

We had quite a special introduction to Palermo: As we arrived in the city by ferry at 5am, we got to see the city and all its beautiful buildings without people. Then, in a couple of hours when people started to come out (and it gets super crowded) it was all another (and a bit less lovely) experience.

On of the best thing in Palermo is the food! They are - as the whole Sicily is - specialized in poor people’s cheap, fatty street food. Our favourite was arancina, fried rice balls stuffed with cheese, meat and some veggies.

We didn’t go out in Palermo in the evening (because we had to catch our sleep) but looking at the aftermath in the morning it is wild (there are empty liquor bottles scattered everywhere. By the way, it is also one of the dirtiest cities we’ve seen - even more than Paris and Istanbul. As we read, this a more general problem to the island, due to lack of garbage people and garbage collecting facilities.

Cathedral of Palermo

The most characteristic side of the Cathedral of Palermo is the mixture of Islamic, Byzantine and Roman architecture. The building was erected in the 12th century, but underwent several renovation and restorations.

The cathedral is stunning from outside, inside is rather meh - classic cathedral.

The most famous tourist attraction in Palermo is the Cappella Palatino and the mosaics in there, but we didn’t go there because it was 22 € entry! Yes we are cheap. Instead we went to check two other edifices, with stunning views and free or very cheap entrances!

Cathedral of Monreale

Compared to the Cathedral of Palermo, the outside part of the Cathedral of Monreale is less attractive, but inside is another story! This church was built in the 12th century and is thought that to be part of a plan of large constructions in competition with the then bishop of Palermo and its own cathedral, we feel that Monreale won that competition!

Upon entering the edifice, we got stunned by the roof paintings and decoration, we never seen such thing before!

All is painted in gold, and in the center we can see a gigantic representation of Jesus!

Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio

Back in Palermo, we found this small church which also had interesting mosaic of influences, with its Baroque facade, its Romanesque belltower and its Byzantine dome! Inside can also be found some Arabic inscriptions.

After Palermo we went to Syracusa, Taormina, Etna and Catania. Both Ortigia in Syracusa and Taormina are very lovely (and a bit expensive touristic) places but we don’t have much pictures of the streets because we got bored of taking pictures at some point.

Syracusa

Archeological park of Neapolis

Syracusa is big in history. It has seen a large influence from the Greek, mostly rulled by tyrans and home notably of Archimedes, one of the most important scientist of its time (3rd century B.C.). While loosing to Roman empire they left an amazing acheological site in the city - somehow more pronounced than the Roman ancient site. The antic theatre with the view of the city, and a small waterfall at the back, streets of ruins of houses can still be seen in the site. But the best part of there was its almost natural park like atmosphere, contrary to the classical walking under the heating sun archeological day. We were walking underneath big trees, with multiple ways and paths. Especially there was a garden with a big centuries old tree, which felt like coming from an elven city from lord of the rings.

There were also antic quarries on the site, named Latomiae, were also used as a prison

The large white greek theater, built in the 5th century B.C., is fully carved into the rock, allowing it to have conserved fully its structure over time.

Also carved into rock, a Roman amphitheater has also been built, in the 1st century, it could host 20 000 spectators!

Madonna delle Lacrime

Another (weird?) symbol of the city is a post-modern church, which looks like what scientologists would choose as a temple. It feels just cold and honestly very far away from any other church we have visited. The most absurd fact is that this gigantic edifice has been built (by French architects!) to celebrate a miracle that happened in 1953, when a family claimed that their statuette of Marie started releasing tear drops at several occasions. This has been officially recognised by the church as being a real miracle, but there is also an Italian chemist that reproduced the phenomenon on a similar effigy of Marie by injecting salty water in it. So did all of this started from a trickery?

Etna

Our stay at the caravan

We stayed in Piedimonte Etna (feet of the mountain). For two nights we decided to try out the caravan life, so we went to Mario’s garden, where he lives with his girlfriend, this was a lovely experience!

We had a night eating together, Mario and his girlfriend prepared some pasta pesto, made us try the mushrooms they are growing in a small house in the garden, everything was very tasty. We evem had a small concert with both of them playing guitar and singing italian songs!

Mario is also in a Pink Floyd tribute band (he is behind the keyboards in the video), and luckily they were playing a small live concert at a bar of a nearby town - finally first live rock music in months!

Our mountain adventure

We had weather-wise a bit bad luck in Etna, and being cheap people, didn’t pay for the cable car but went up to 2100 m from the other side of the mountain, upon suggestion from Mario.

Going up

Going up was fun but also hard, the slop was pretty steep and climbing was quite tiring. At the same time, seeing the dirt being exclusively made of black rocks (from the lava), combined with white birche forest was a very peculiar sight.

The more we climbed, the more the landscape morphed into a lunar landscape, with less nature and more rocks.

On top !

Once on top we were welcomed by high wind, and a stunning view on the other side of the part of the mountain. The other side was so steep that Ece discovered a fear of heights!

Going down

Once we started going downhill, we got into a snow storm, then a thunderstorm was going on rather close to us. That was quite scary!

But then we saw a shepherd and his sheeps and started seeing again the birches.

Mission accomplished, short (2h30) but hard hike! For anyone willing to try we recommend to go there during a sunny day 😄

Leaving Sicily

We took a night train from Catania to Naples.

The crazy part about it is that at Messina, the train takes… A ferry! That situation is unique in Europe, so we had to document this!

Here you can see the night train being loaded in the ferry:

We could also see another ferry, loaded with other trains, coming to port and getting ready to be unloaded: