Palermo

We didn’t know what to expect of Palermo, its name familiar, but little else.

Some fly into the Falcone Borsellino Airport, rent a car, then drive south for the beaches and the ruins, never setting foot in Sicily’s administrative capital.

Some stop to visit the Cattedrale di Palermo and little else.

Others winter annually in this city by the sea, like the two gentlemen we met at dinner last night. In their 80’s, one from London and the other Munich, they’ve visited every January since retirement, staying til spring and the blooming of crocuses back home.

Still others come for a winter holiday and never leave. An example, the couple dining to our right. Pittsburgh Steeler fans most of their lives, they promised to relocate to a land without ice and snow once the kids left and were settled. That’s been a decade now. These days, they get back every April and October, beating the peak season fares. The children visit when they can.

What Pa and I discovered when we arrived,

is that Palermo is an old city,

with little to suggest the glitz of other Italian metropolises far to the north.

It has a different feel as well.

Understandably so, as Sicily is far closer to northern Africa than Rome.

There’s been no urban renewal here, and we like that.

Walk the Via Roma from the Stazione to our Hostal and there’s much to see,

and discover too, if you take the time to look down

and stay long enough

to enjoy intestines at their best.

But Palermo experiences a metamorphosis with the departure of daylight.

There‘s a different feel, as if the lights of night have an irresistible attraction.

The dining begins, of course,

and the socializing in general.

Even the Polizia seem more show than anything else.

Continue on

and the colors of night change,

acquiescing in their own way

to a different magic

one, in which, even the laundry has its own charm.