Posts Tagged ‘Palermo’
{ December 18, 2008 @ 1:14 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: abnormal, airport, atchoo, aunt, bags, bear, binoculars, car, check-in, coca-cola, coffee, duvets, England, enormous, explained, fire, fist, flight, freezing, front, gesture, giggles, Giovanni, Gizmo, glass, hug, ice, ireland, jack-change-it, jackets, jumpers, karen, lake, laughter, lemons, lifetime, milkshake, MP3, Natalie, night, packed, Palermo, Palermo Univercit, passports, pathetic, powerless, quarter, queue, refrigerator, Robert, Scotland, shine, shiver, shoes, side-tracked, SIM card, squashed, street, suitcases, sun, swing, teenagers, tickets, traipsing, trampled, tree, trolley, U.K., Venetia, washing-machine, wife }
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Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Hey everyone!
Well yes, it was the night before we left we were all packed up and ready to go. It was really strange leaving that house. Now that I think about it I didn’t actually leave that much behind in Sicily. It was strange not doing anything with the refrigerator and the washing-machine. We just left them in the house for Giovanni to have.
I left a few “warm” (… not light) clothes, thinking that I wouldn’t need them in south-west France… wow, I was wrong! That giant, jumper thing really could’ve come in handy today. It’s been absolutely FREEZING *shivers*! But it can’t get much worse because all of the French are already in giant jackets and jumpers… unless they just stay wrapped up in duvets next to a cosy fire in winter… and even if they do, I’m up for that 
!
So anyway we were all packed with the things we actually needed. Now going back we only had 3 suitcases… I wanted to bring the swing that we’d got in Sicily… it was such a cool swing; see what I mean about not being so great with leaving things behind! But in the end the swing was still swinging silently on its own, hanging from the tree that I had tied it to 
.
Yeah, we only had three suitcases because my mom was in England and therefore wasn’t flying with us. The flight we’d taken was only one suitcase per person… my mom had to leave most of her things behind (my dad was packing 
)… but it was mainly just her jumpers and shoes.
The lemons in Sicily were absolutely enormous (I just remembered how much I miss them)! If you make a fist with your hand that’s the size they were! Okay, if you make a fist with my hand … The first day in England I walked into Karen’s dining room where my sister and my aunt (Natalie) were.
There was this… thing on the table. It was like a Sicilian lemon… but a million times smaller. I burst into fits of laughter and asked “What is that thing?!”… yes that was a lemon, Natalie seemed pretty confused, but Venetia joined in with my fits of giggles and then explained to Natalie. We’d only been away from the U.K. for two months, but really… this is what I used to think was a lemon! Ha! You’d get at least a quarter of a tall glass filled with lemon juice from one! Four would make a whole jug of lemon juice… here you’d have to use like twenty! Pathetic !
Right, yes back to Sicily. Sorry keep getting side-tracked! On the last night in Sicily, we drank an abnormal amount of milkshake (since we had a lot of milk in the fridge… and coincidently a lot of chocolate powder) and played jack-change-it to pass the time. We got to bed pretty early, then I was woken up at… okay I can’t remember the exact time, but it was much earlier than early for me. It was around about two am-ish… maybe four.
Once we were all ready we packed up the car and off we went. I was cramped in the back with suitcases sticking into my sides and a heavy carry-on-case on my lap. After an hour of being stuck like this we arrived at the airport, had a nice long stretch and then brought our bags inside.
So you’re wondering what we did with the car? Well even if you’re not I’m going to tell you anyway . Do you remember that guy I told you about I think it was eight blogs ago, the one that we met in the small electrical shop on the first day of being in Sicily, where we wanted to buy a SIM card from? He had moved to Sicily 11 years ago from Scotland and was teaching in Palermo University. Yeah, him! Well let’s just say Robert. Well Robert’s son had just turned 18 and Robert had wanted to buy a car for him. My dad had found this out when he’d phoned him to ask if he wanted our car. What are the odds, eh?
So Robert met us up in the airport, had coffee (what else?… Sicilians drink far too much coffee… but being in Sicily it’s difficult not to get hooked on the strong stuff with a coffee bar on every single street… I even did) with his wife and my dad, signed the papers then drove off in the car. Now it was just a waiting game for the check-in and then the flight to finally see my mom, who I hadn’t seen for almost a month now and then there was also Gizmo!!!
We had our last Sicilian coffee and breakfast then went off to check-in. Not again! Our bags were the correct weight combined but not separately… it was like so what’s the difference… apparently there is a difference . So we spread out the weights into the different bags, and then finally checked in… I had to leave my binoculars behind, which I’d been traipsing around with me since Ireland .
After an hour of waiting in the waiting area, the woman announced that it was “All Aboard Time” okay she didn’t actually say this but it was something in Italian and then everyone started moving quickly towards the doors… so this was sort of a gesture that we could start lining up to show our passports and tickets.
If you every go to Sicily be warned! Most Sicilians do not like waiting in a queue, so either stand your ground or move to the back before you get trampled on… or ultimately squashed between people.
We buckled ourselves in and with a smooth start (and no ear popping) we were off. My mom told us to look out for an ice lake shaped like a bears head somewhere to the north of Italy or south of France during the flight, but it was too cloudy… or it could have just been when I was busy concentrating on my coca cola and I didn’t notice it .
The flight was actually a lot of fun. There were a few teenagers more to the front that got down their electric guitars and started playing (not plugged in of course). Later on I turned my MP3 player up really loud, over the voices of the cabin, then I heard this ATCHOO! Turned to Venetia knowing it would’ve been her and said “I heard that even OVER my loud music!”… we burst into fits of giggles.
Later on we landed, stood around like everyone else waiting for the bags to come through. When they did we grabbed them. Adjusted them so that they’d stop slipping off the trolley and off we went to see my mom! As we came around the corner I couldn’t see her no matter how many times Venetia said, “There she is, no Bianca over there! That way!” Then I spotter her… right in front of everyone else, ran up to her and gave her a gianormous hug… or rather she gave me the gianormous hug… I was left powerless .
We went over to the car and drove south for a good hour or so, stopping at a fast food place on the way. Since I’d only been once in Sicily and was craving milkshake… you’d think I would’ve had enough on the last night in Sicily for me to never want any more for a lifetime … I hadn’t.
We finally arrived in a nice little village, then went to Karen’s house, I could hear Gizmo barking before the car had even stopped. I jumped out and Gizmo was already out to greet me. I had missed him so much!
Gizmo wants to play now and the sun’s starting to shine again. So going to leave it at that and will be back soon . Hope to hear from you all.
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 12:01 PM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: addicted, airport, anchor, archaeological, attacks, banana, banane e frutti di bosco, ben and jerry's, Bianca, boat, cathedral, Charlemagne, cheesecake, coughing, descendants, dig, drools, forest, fountain, France, fresh, fruits, gargoyles, gelato, gold, harbour, helmet, hermit, history, hunter, ice-cream, Italian, lemon, marble, memory, mmmm, monster, motorbike, mountain, noble, Normal, nude, Palermitani, Palermitani Public Square, Palermo, Paris, Piazza Pretoria, plague, prayed, procedure, reached, refresh, remains, Saint Rosalia, scented, scratched, Shame, shrine, Sicilian, sicily, sick, sinking, standsted, stomach, tippy top, vans, voila, watering, wishes, yummy }
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Monday, October 29, 2007
Hello again!
As you can see I don’t post blogs over the weekend… so I have to refresh my memory now…
We stayed in Sicily for two months, the first two weeks of that were spent in Palermo. Palermo’s the main city, like Paris is for France. The three weeks there we saw some absolutely amazing things! Like I said before the statues there were absolutely gorgeous, gargoyles on the buildings, and statues that the city has been built around, we were just wandering around and somehow managed to bump into Piazza Pretoria… a very… nude fountain … it was finished being built in 1581 and since the Public square has still been called the Palermitani Public square of the Shame because of how… nude it is .
Moving on… my dad’s family took us to lots of places around Palermo. One for instance was Saint Rosalia; I know that I’ve said before. Well if you ever go, I’m warning you now that it is a very, long, steep drive up the mountain and lemon scented air fresheners do not help at all! It made my stomach turn and gave me a headache, but once we reached the very, tippy top and breathed in the wonderfully fresh air, I was fine again 
!
We parked then had to climb quite a few steps until we finally made it. It was very pretty actually, with the mountain, looking as if it was leaning on the cathedral… really the cathedral had been built into the mountain.
Here’s a little bit of history for you now, come on it won’t kill you to read it ! Saint Rosalia was born in 1130 to a Norman noble family that were descendents of Charlemagne. Once she grew up she decided to go live as a “hermit” in the mountains. In 1166 she died, but nobody knew of it. Then in 1624 a plague took over Palermo, apparently Saint Rosalia “appeared” to a sick woman first. And then a hunter. She told the hunter to climb the mountain and described the cave in which he would find her remains in, so of course he did, finding the bones as she described. He brought them back down to Palermo and a cathedral was built in that cave.
Inside was gorgeous! If you read the post below you’ll see that I’ve already told you about the open area where the rain water came in, flowed down the pipes that were along the walls and then finished at the Holy water. As you walked past that bit, you came into the cathedral with the chairs and the altar but to the left was a large glass, tank sort of this with a marble and gold statue of Saint Rosalia and an angel inside, on top of that there was a box with everyone’s wishes that had visited it.
As you walk through the entrance there’s an absolute monster of an anchor just sitting there, quite confusing, eh? This isn’t a harbour… we’re on the top of a mountain :S… I was thinking.
Well the story goes that as a boat was sinking the people on it prayed to Saint Rosalia and voila ( <<< hey look at that! I’m really getting French here!!!) the boat stopped sinking. So the people that were on the boat carried the anchor all the way up the mountain!!! There’s a shrine with pictures and thank you messages with similar stories, for instance there’s a torn and scratched up motorbike helmet, no need in explaining this guy’s story .
I was just trying to think of things to type and (:-O! I can’t believe that I haven’t told you about this thing yet!!! GELATO!!! I LOVE it SO much! It is Sicilian ice-cream (gelato is basically just the word ice-cream… except in Italian)…
My mouth’s watering just thinking of it! If you go to Sicily, you will come accustomed to seeing gelaterias on practically every street. A gelateria is an ice-cream parlour. You go in and there’s a counter filled with TONNES of different types of ice-cream. It is the most complex procedure EVER! Once you choose what you want then it’s simple enough .
I was addicted to it. My favourite ever was Banane e frutti di bosco (I can’t believe I still remembered that… 5 months is a very long time to remember the name of an Italian ice-cream!), Banana and fruits of the forest. Oooh! *Drools* it was the nicest… even better than the cheesecake at Stansted airport !
The nicest ice-cream that I’ve ever had in Ireland was Ben and Jerry’s Archaeological Dig from a tub or something like that. It was chocolate with chocolate shaped dinosaurs ! Mmmm yummy! The ice-cream from the ice-cream vans always gave me coughing attacks…
Well I think that’s enough about ice-cream now… next post I’ll tell you about more Sicilian adventures… that’s where the fun really begins !
Hope to hear from you all soon.
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 11:46 AM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: ankle, Bianca, breakfast, dead, dinner, distracted, Easter, English, everyone, final, fish, flapping, fluffy, frantically, gently, gianormous, Gizmo, grape, gutter, guys, heart breaking, hid, highlight, holiday, Holy, jackets, keeper, kissed, laughed, light, love, Mazara del Vallo, Mondello, Mondello beach, motorway, mountain, never, Palermo, perfect, phone, playing, pointer, puppy, rambled, reading, remind, ROCK, Saint Rosalia, scarves, Scotland, sicily, SIM, sky, start, statues, stubbron, Sunday, temperature, train, tree, type, vigorous, vines, walking, wearing, wind, winter }
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Friday, October 26, 2007
Hi everyone!
I don’t get it but because it’s a blog you have to start reading from the bottom and make your way up :-S. Noticed this a while ago just never thought to remind you guys .
Right… now where was I with my last post… I’m not going to go by everyday in Sicily… mainly because I’ve forgotten a lot and I’ll only type up the interesting stuff .
Sicilian’s (not all of them, but most) are very stubborn, they keep wearing their gianormous winter jackets and scarves, no matter what temperature the day is all the way up until June! Then they’re free to wear what they like … of course I didn’t know this on my very first day of being in Sicily. I woke up and it was gorgeous outside, so as any sane person would do, after getting ready I put on LIGHT clothes.
Then again me coming straight from cold Ireland, it may actually have been cold for the locals and I just wasn’t used to it because I was so used to freezing temperatures… literally if Gizmo wanted to go outside in Ireland, I’d open the door just slightly let him out, struggle against the wind to close the door again, then run to a window and watch him… I was always afraid he’d get blown away … we lived on a hill in the middle of the country side so… it COULD have been possible !
Once we’d had breakfast we went for a walk around the area we were in. After 5 minutes of looking around I got stopped by an elderly man, who started rambling on in Sicilian, making vigorous arm movements towards me and then the sky, then him… me and the sky a final time… quite confusing… then he tapped my bare arms and said in Italian this time “cold?”, I laughed and said “No, I’m from Ireland”. He kissed me on the cheek and wandered off… it was very strange but then again, I didn’t know the Sicilian culture…
On the first day we had to get a phone SIM card, so we went into a small electrical shop… it is the most obvious thing to do . Anyway we really couldn’t get our message across but strangely enough a guy walked into the shop at this exact time, the shop keeper greeted him and then said something in Italian… he immediately started speaking perfect English… what are the odds! It turns out he’d moved to Sicily 11 years ago from Scotland, and was now teaching at the university near by. Anyhow we got his number and the SIM card and left. This left my spirits slightly higher, but they were later crushed again when I found out that an English speaker who’s not a tourist in Sicily is very odd … AHHH!
Palermo is an absolutely gorgeous city… it just has a lot of stray dogs which you know what that leads (HA! Leads!!! Do you get it? . I’m SO funny!!! … if you could hear me now, you’d know this is said in a sarcastic way… so just read it like that ) to on the ground . Yeah! Some Sicilians don’t seem to love their animals as much as the French do. Over Easter there, some of them go on holiday and just set their dogs free to look after themselves, when they come back if their dog’s still there they’ll take it back… most aren’t though… on the motorway we say tonnes of little, fluffy, dead…dogs… it was absolutely heart breaking!
Our house that we found (I’ll get to this later), the garden of it, used to be the home of the guard dog of the house, before we moved in. Now the owners were supposed to take him away… they did. They just threw the poor thing into the boot, slammed it shut, drove down the lane and we thought that was the last we were going to hear of him. A few days later my sister and I took a walk down the lane only to find the poor thing tied to a tree on a short chain by the grape vines. We ran down to him and found that he had no water and today was absolutely blistering heat! We quickly walked back up to the house, got a few bottles of water brought them down to him and later that night we even brought him the left over from dinner.
The owners of the house, we noticed, came back and gave him some of those dog pebbles, but we still fed him sometimes… in the end my parents and I were even taking him for walks, we weren’t allowed to give him a name though because then we’d become too attatched… he was part pointer it was really funny to watch him chase a lizard, then run around the rock digging at where he thought it had gone even though it had long run away through the grass.
But not all Sicilians are like this with their animals, one day, actually when we were leaving Palermo to go to Mazara del vallo, which is to the south west of Sicily (I’ll also get to that later).We were waiting for a train and we saw an elderly man with a puppy that would literally fit in your hand! He would push the puppy gently away with his foot then keep on walking, but the puppy kept coming back and jumping all over him… okay all over his ankle… it couldn’t really reach much higher . Anyway he sat down on a bench doubled over with his arms flapping about playing with it. At the end he walked around the fountain and the puppy got distracted and was looking down at something through the gutter. The owner saw, then ran and “hid” behind a pole watching the puppy like a little boy.
Soon the puppy realised that it’s owner had gone missing and began running around, looking frantically for him, eventually it spotted his owner, ran over then went crazy! It was the last highlight of my time in Palermo.
Yes the statues in Palermo city were absolutely gorgeous! In Palermo we met some of my father’s family. The first time we met them we went to lunch… they can eat A LOT of fish… actually Sicilians can just eat A LOT . They invited us to their house a few Sundays and wow, we could hardly move!!! They also took us around quite a few times (I promise I’ll get back to all of these things in more posts to come!). A few places was Mondello beach… I have to say I hadn’t ever seen so many people out and about, playing football, walking, or just sitting around… and it was almost dark!… and very cold … even for me !
Another one was the cave were Saint Rosalia was found. It was very pretty, built into the mountain and had a big, open area where the rain water came in and was captured into little pipes along the walls which ended at the Holy water area. Pretty scary being inside though because of the way the rocks just jut out in random places so you don’t quite know how safe it is !
I’m sure I’ll go into more detail about these places and put up a few images soon. Going to leave it at that, don’t want to make you all TOO bored . Hope to hear from you all soon!
- Bianca
{ December 18, 2008 @ 11:38 AM }
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{ Kiss My Fishy }
{ Tags: adventure, aunt, bath, bed, Bianca, C.P.R., cheesecake, cigarettes, cigars, crazy, dad, electric, England, fairy, film, fishing, flower, football, Gizmo, gran, great-gran, grrr, happened, heavy, ireland, Italian, jumping, karen, leather, lights, lives, lollipops, luggage, machine, Mafia, Maisy, Malta, March, miserable, mom, month, Mount. Etna, mouths, nail, name, Palermo, parents, person, pictures, pink, planes, pop, postponed, reassured, reluctant, rugby, scarier, shirt, Sicialian, sicily, sleep, slouched, Stansted, supposed, taxi, team, The Holiday Inn, Thursday, uncle, upsetting, website, woman, world, zoom }
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Thursday, October 25, 2007
Hey everyone!
First off, I’ve decided this website isn’t just going to be about fishing (although that’s a big part of it ). Since I haven’t gone fishing lately (I was supposed to be going over the weekend… don’t quite know what happened there /:[ ) I haven’t got any fishing stories, so I’ll just zoom all the way back to the 1st of March when my adventures around the world really began.
If any of you have ever moved country you’ll know how difficult packing is! I had to bring my WHOLE life in just one suitcase! I’m not so great with throwing things out, quite a few times I kept packing arbitrary items… for instance pink, flower, fairy lights kept managing to find its own way in the suitcase… okay it was me… aww how I loved those… eventually though I replaced them with more… useful things after being persuaded by the fact that the plug sockets in Sicily would be different… it’s okay though taking them out freed up like half my suitcase !
I also had to leave my (absolutely GORGEOUS) electric guitar which I’d only gotten 2 months earlier!!! That was so depressing, I WAS going to attempt bringing it as hand luggage but didn’t really want the hassle and it was SOOO heavy.
To get on with the story, grrr as I’m sure you can see I have a tendency to move onto a different subject and get distracted… Anyway, a few days before the 1st (which is when we departed Ireland) my gran, (I just call her Karen, so from now on I’m saying Karen) was staying with us and gave us the FRIGHT of our lives (I’m using us and our because my parents, sister, second cousin and my uncle were in the house at the time, with me of course ).
I was in a deep sleep because I wanted to get a relatively early night, when I heard shouts and yells and stuff of MOM, MOM!. I ran downstairs, into the lounge expecting my gran to be doing something stupid instead my uncle and my dad were giving her C.P.R., later I found out she’d collapsed and her heart had stopped beating! The rugby was on that night so Karen must of just been over excited or something , a few hours earlier she was jumping around cheering on her favourite team … why was I on this story…?
Oh right yeah well Karen was supposed to be taking Gizmo (our small dog, I’m sure I’ve told you about him before) on the ferry with her, across to England there she would look after him at her house until we were settled in Sicily (since we just got up and left and didn’t bother finding a house first since someone, not saying anybody’s name in particular … usually people would put the persons name here and I’m very tempted to… but I won’t since I’m so, very nice … said that it was easy enough to find a house there. This later proved as wrong . See there I go again, off a different direction to the story… although this has got something to do with the story so I guess it’s not that bad…!
(Gizmo!!! The post looked very boring so thought I’d give you a glimpse of him
! He’s on the window sill at my gran’s house, I think Gizmo spent too much of his time watching my uncle and aunt’s cat… He’s in England hints the fact that he’s wearing a shirt
!)
I’ll continue with what I was saying, Karen came around and my parents rushed her to hospital, she’s all fine now though . But she was supposed to be taking Gizmo on Tuesday, we were going to be leaving on Thursday. Gizmo and Karen’s departure was postponed until Saturday so I had to say goodbye to Gizmo and leave him behind with Karen and my great-gran (Maisey). It was so upsetting! I knew I wouldn’t see him for at least a month, an actual fact it was TWO!
And off our taxi took us (since we’d left our car with a friend who was going to sell it for us). We slept at the hotel across the road from Belfast International Airport, because our flight was at 08:00 am… FAAAAAAAAR too early for me .
Somehow I managed to get up and be ready in the morning for my flight. My sister actually has some footage of us that morning… which I’ll have to find, most of the recording I was slouched over my suitcase on the floor of the hotel bedroom, moaning at her not to film me ! Venetia (my sister) did get some of the planes taking off though and you can see how early it is because of how dark it is outside!
Once we were all ready and had had breakfast we all crossed the road and checked in. Our first flight was very short and was surprisingly painless! Usually my ears pop… with a lot of pain going up and then coming down, despite my efforts to chew gum, or suck lollipops… sometimes I’d even try sleeping. We flew to Stansted in England first, sat around for a few hours, had lunch at a really nice Italian place, oh my word, the CHEESECAKE was the NICEST there it was so yummy!!!!
Once we only had about an hour of waiting to do we found out that our luggage was too heavy for the next flight to Palermo, Sicily! Quickly we sorted it out, I had to leave the coolest nail set ever behind, which I’d also only got two months earlier, it had an electric nail buffing machine!!!
We checked in again, and got on the plane to Palermo, my ears didn’t pop too painfully this time either, something in the day to be thankful about !
After a few hours, the pilot landed the plane safely and we all got out, grabbed our luggage and walked around to the exit which came out onto one of the most Sicilian scenes that I’d ever seen… mainly because I’d only ever been to Sicily once and it was just for a day trip from Malta to Mount. Etna, to get there we had to go on one of the fastest catamarans in the world! Well anyway it was tonnes of black cabs parked outside with all of the taxi drivers dressed up like people from the “Mafia” with their leather jackets on and cigars or cigarettes hanging out of their mouths… yet, they weren’t standing around looking cool, or sitting in their cabs, they were playing football and yelling at each other in Sicilian… it was quite late already so the lighting just seemed to make everything a whole lot scarier .
We managed to drag one of the taxi drivers away from his football, packed up our suitcases, buckled ourselves in and off we went. They drive like… CRAZY there! I was sitting in the middle at the back and just keeping my eye on the speedometer. Once we arrived at The Holiday Inn, the cab driver made us pay 60 euros for a five minute journey, so if you ever go to Sicily, I think it’s best to just hire a car out. We went inside only to find a miserable looking woman slouched in her seat at the reception. My dad used his broken Sicilian and asked if she had any rooms, she was reluctant at first, finally she gave us our key, and we went up stairs. At this moment, I just wanted to go right back to our home in Ireland. I had a bath, was reassured by my dad that I just needed a good night’s sleep and I’d enjoy it more in the morning, so I went to bed.
Will continue with my Sicilian adventure tomorrow . Sorry this post had nothing to do with fishing.
Hope to hear from you all soon, still waiting on those pictures .
- Bianca
