Woke at dawn and looking out the window, saw people just going home, the girls with high heels in hand and maybe a partner, a lover alongside, then there were the cleaners just starting their day.
We had a long trip to Sicily via Athens, finally making it to Palermo and our room in a converted Palazzo. A crickety lift took us to the fourth floor, where a vintage theme awaited us. We embraced the aircon, went in search of food close by and then retired early.
Palermo, a melting pot of Middle eastern and Italian influences in food and architecture. Still suffering like Naples from wartime bombing and the Mafia, we wander in late summer heat, past palm trees and abandoned beautiful buildings. We went to the Capo markets with it's artistic arrangements of fruit and vegetables and painted barrows of pomegranate, orange and lemon juices. We bought small green jammy figs and wandered into the centre. It felt as if caught in the 50's . Men with hand painted barrows of gelato and juice carts walked by; brightly coloured barrows selling beautiful cane bags decorated with tassels, gold and artwork; tiny old fiat 500's and Ape, small Italian delivery vans.
I was here with my husband 31 years ago, visiting his sister who lived here. I remembered her picking us up in her tiny coffee coloured Fiat 500, trying to pack us and our bags into it, stopping alongside a gelateria near the port and making us try the brioche stuffed with my first taste of hazelnut gelato. I was overwhelmed and in instantly in love with Italian food. We passed by armoured tanks parked on the side of the roads here and there, the Mafia still in residence.
My sister-in-law was generous and as tough as you have to be living in Palermo alongside the mafia. She showed me through Byzantine churches of golden mosaics and Arabesque style cupolas: we went up into the hills to get the best coffee granita topped with whipped cream which was so strong it gave me heart palpitations and I was high on caffeine for the rest of the day; she took me higher into the hills where they made the best cannoli with sheeps milk ricotta that were lined with chocolate so the shells didn't get soft; she took me to another place where they made watermelon tarts, again lined with chocolate and the watermelon jelly dotted with bitter chocolate chips. The memories!
We found a patisserie where they had tiny cannoli, baby cassatas and the watermelon tarts but I don't think they tasted as good as the ones from almost thirty years ago. We walked past the castle, built by the Normans who conquered Sicily in the 11th century.They were originally Vikings from Scandinavia who settled in Normandy in the north of France and then terrorised and conquered European coastlines and invaded both England and Sicily. The castle was built over an Arabian palace and is the oldest royal residence in Europe. We saw the Fountain of Shame (1554), named because most of the statues are naked and then we lunched on a buffet of different type of vegetables, radicchio, chicory and slices of eggplant simply done with garlic, parsley and olive oil.
I left the daughter to have a siesta and wandered through another food market, enjoying the noise, the shouts of the sellers, the smells, the heaps of wilted peelings to the side of the markets, the amazing street food tantalising with aromas of seafood, garlic, tomatoes and herbs. The city is well lived in, not very clean but the people are full of joie de vivre and pride in their stalls, their food, their art. I find a street full of amazing colourful ceramics and wish I could buy everything and take it home but it lives here, the colours and shapes, the stories the ceramics tell exist in this crazy environment.
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