Palermo

Who could guess it could be so hot in October! The temperature stayed well above 25°C for a whole week. Welcome to the dolce vita of Sicily!

Our first stop was in Palermo. Rightly or wrongly but this city has been always associated with mafia (La Cosa Nostra) who indeed after centuries of absentee sovereign power, even after unification (1860) infiltrated every level of society. We were really interested to see an emporium where shops do not pay the pizzo (protection money) but... couldn't find it, because no map had any indication of that place!? Two things you certainly can’t avoid in Palermo: madness on the roads and rubbish on the streets. Basically traffic is seamless flow of cars, mopeds and people. Traffic-lights are working fine - green follows red, but nobody seems to care, instead drivers and pedestrians make eye contact and hard to believe (for us tourists anyway) but it works! Mopeds could be noisy too, especially around 5 am in the morning ...under your hotel's window. It is different story with rubbish. Streets are littered, houses look like they never been fixed, black sacks piling up in contrast with billowing laundry on every balcony.

But amid all of this you suddenly "stumble" upon one of the wonders of the medieval world - Monreale cathedral (founded in 1174). It has enormous image of the Christ Pantocrator and, surprisingly, the earliest known portrait of St. Thomas Becket. Not far from Monreale (30 min by car and then 30 min walk uphill) on the the hilltop is located Castellacio - the 12th-century Norman castle. It commands a beautiful view over the valley and Palermo city from one side and absolutely surreal picture of charred and half-burned trees from the other.

From Palermo we went across the whole island to Catania - Sicily's second largest city (vulnerable to Etna's unpredictable behaviour, most notably the massive 1693 earthquake). It's a perfect gateway to mount Etna - Europe's largest active volcano, Taormina - Sicily's most popular holiday destination and of course Syracuse - hometown of the renowned mathematician Archimedes (287-212 BC).