Felice Pasqua

I bought this pastry for 2,20 Euro in a hole in the wall bakery on Via Dante. I think it's some sort of basket-shaped yeast bread with a hard boiled egg in the center. Something "traditional" according to the 2 bakers and 3 Sicilian customers in the store at the time. Being from America and massacring the Italian I'm trying to speak, I'm providing new gossip for the locals. I heard the word "dove" several times, but this is a chicken egg for sure.

The Cloister at Monreale

It's been wretched weather, but my 4 euro ticket bought me a glimpse of a crazy ornate chapel in the North Transept (motto = more is always better when you have unlimited access to underemployed stone masons and sculptors) and this gorgeous Arabian style garden. Built in the C12th. Wow! Worth the overcrowded #389 AMAT bus and insane traffic from Piazza d'Independenza.

Such sad news from Belgium

This morning, while I was admiring this lovely chapel in the cathedral of St Dominic, people were injured and dead from a terrorist bombing. So sad. Rest in peace.

Saint Agatha

A lovely C15th fresco in the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, a museum in a renovated palazzo in the La Kalsa neighborhood, another slum that's being transformed. All the art is from destroyed churches, palazzi and other places. It's a well presented collection of the sorts of things you can never see this close, if they were still in situ. So many of Palermo's churches (and there are so many churches ) are badly lit, dusty, cold and in poor repair. Plenty of tombs of once grand people who no longer mean anything to anyone living. That's what you see in the churches that are open. Many are locked.

In Vucciria

A telling juxtaposition of old and new in Palermo's squalid and urban revitalising market neighborhood. An ornate baroque fountain that still serves water to the locals. I presume the date in the graffiti refers to the bombing of Palermo in world war 2. While I was studying the scene a local, pulling a shopping cart full of empty 1litre water bottles came by and proceeded to refill them at this fountain. Made me wonder about where those bottles were going. In some ways Palermo reminds me of the chaotic new/old clash in China. The streets stink and there's litter everywhere. But people are just going about their lives and not worrying about things outside their control.

La passeggiata near 4 corners downtown Palermo

Monday night here. The street is closed to cars and everyone strolls in the bike lane. Nary an angry ding a ling from the cyclists whizzing past. Seems Sicilians have a very flexible approach to road rules. The parking is like sardine can, and crossing the street, which involves walking directly into the whirling traffic is a real change. I try to time it for me to join a
Palermo granny stepping into the strew with no reaction at all to the traffic bearing down on them. As for the near misses of fender bender. Wow.

When I next need bike bags

I think these Florentine leather beauties are 429 Euros. Wow.