Thus Far

Written last night:

I am currently sitting on the ship that will take us from Palermo to Tunis, scheduled to depart any minute now. There is no wifi available, but I thought with the time available I’d use it and have a blog post ready next time we have the internet.

It was fun to see Rome again, there is so much there. The architecture is pretty fantastic. I’m going back in time a bit cause I didn’t have time to do much detail last night. When I got in, Brian and Allen and I headed to the Vatican to go thru the museum and the Sistine Chapel. We waited in line for 45 minutes. It was long, but nothing like what Katie and I saw when we were there over the summer a few years ago. Thank goodness they both do museums the way I do – fast. I think we spent an hour and a half tops in there and its huge.

They had all these chairs set up in St Peters square, we asked why - there were 6 saints being canonized the next day. Thats what the tapestries are hanging down - pics of the saints to be.



After that we walked around and saw quite a few different plazas and monuments . . . some I’d seen before and some I haven’t. We got the standard margharite pizza for lunch and went to a market and different things.



I tried alcohol at the market. Twice. Oops. There were all these flavored little barrels out and little cups for free samples. I tried a chocolate one and thought it was the weirdest tasting chocolate drink I’d ever tried when it burned going down. Should have been my first clue, right? Nope. Didn’t even cross my mind – I told Brian to let me try his mango one. Yep, that one burned too. The booth owner confirmed when we asked “alcohol?” We had a good laugh over that one.

It rained for awhile in the afternoon, so we waited it out for a bit in a plaza. Then we decided since it was raining we should go to a movie. We went back to the hostel to google it and then ended up in the same plaza where we waited on the rain. We went in to the theatre and found out that all the movies were dubbed in Italian. None in English or with subtitles so we decided to forego that. We walked down to where the ruins and such are and started taking some really fun pictures. Allen has a lot of them on his camera, but it died so I got a few too.

Mine was too dark to see the coliseum behind us, but its there. And the orange thing in front of my face is the whistle/clasp from my backpack. Nice.



This is a night time view of my favorite building in Rome:


We had so much fun doing it that after Allen’s camera died (his takes better night shots than my little one and my big one was not conducive to the circumstances) that we decided to go back to the hostel for a bit and let the camera charge and then come back and take some more. So we have a slew of jumping pictures in front of the coliseum and such. Pretty fun.

When we got back to the hostel, Ben had just gotten in. After he was all checked in, we went and had dinner and then back to the hostel for bed.

Our flight to Palermo was around 9am on Sunday so we left the hostel about 6am. We took a taxi to the airport and then had plenty of time to wait around. Our flight got delayed cause one of the engines was having difficulties, but we ended up getting in around 11am.


As we were taking the shuttle from the airport to the heart of Palermo, we saw tell tale signs of a soccer game, so once we got to the hostel and confirmed that there was indeed a game that day we decided to go. Palermo’s team wears PINK jerseys, so everyone was decked in pink and black. We took our time making our way to the stadium and saw a lot of what Palermo has to offer on the way. I quite like Sicily, we decided it’s the Hawaii of Italy. Beautiful lush island with awesome beaches. The city is neat – smaller and not nearly as touristy as Rome but still plenty to see.

Today the plan was to go to Cefalu and see the great beaches there. It’s a little city about half an hour outside of Palermo. We took swimsuits and flip flops but it was all in vain – it rained all day today. Makes for a pretty miserable situation when you’re soaking wet. Thankfully I brought my rain jacket so my top half was dry underneath it, but my pants were pretty soaked and my feet were quite wet. We waited it out for awhile in the duomo and then headed back toward the train station seeing a couple spots along the way. Such a bummer cause I think I would have really liked that little town had it not been raining. The postcards and pics we saw of it were pretty fantastic. Guess I’ll have to come back sometime.

Once we got back to Palermo, we dried off at the hostel for a bit and then went to check out the other things we hadn’t seen yet. It started raining again so we waited it out awhile in another cathedral and then later again in a grocery store. Finally we went back to the hostel again and waited there. The girl that worked there was crabby and ended up kinda kicking us out. Originally she had told us we could leave our stuff there that day while we were out and about for 1Euro. She was upset that we were chillin there and using the internet and stuff I guess. So we left and made our way to the port to check in for the ship.

It was a long cold wait, but we are now in a compact little cabin with 4 bunks. We’ll be crossing the Mediterranean for 10 and a half hours and get into Tunis tomorrow morning. First time in Africa. Awesome.

We’re having a great time so far. Good dynamics with the 4 of us – we laugh a lot and have fun. Good stuff. Heading to bed now, its after midnight . . .