Palermo, Italy

I just met several of my college room mates in Palermo, the biggest city in Sicily, for a long weekend. Just fyi, this entire post is going to be about food. Every. Single. Thing. I ate in Palermo was delicious.

So, in chronological order ... I arrived late afternoon on a Friday and we decided to kick off the weekend with some wine tasting. Okay, wait, first we drank some of this yummy wine, which my friends had already tried, liked, and bought so we could drink it in the apartment:



Then we went to a wine bar called Cana Enoteca, which had been recommended by our airbnb hostess but we had also seen it recommended on tripadvisor. They have a cozy atmosphere and walls lined with wine bottles. We ordered some prosciutto and a cheese selection and asked the waitress to bring us each a different red wine to try. We each ended up drinking two glasses, so we tasted 6 wines total, and every single one of them was good. Below is a picture of one of them.



The next morning we got up and wandered around looking for breakfast. We ended up at a relatively expensive cafe called Spinnato. It wasn't pricey by, say, NYC standards, but compared to other breakfasts we ate in Palermo it was. Here's Esther with what she thought would be a fruit plate when she ordered it, but it was really a little pastry with some fruit on it:



Very few people spoke English in Palermo, and those who did did not speak it well. So there was a lot lost in translation throughout the weekend. Anyway, still at Spinnato, we also tried some arancine, which are deep fried rice balls stuffed with different things. We tried one stuffed with ham and cheese and one stuffed with ground meat and tomatoes and other veggies. This is common street food in Palermo.



After breakfast, we wandered around the city. There are several wide streets that are quasi-pedestrianized (meaning some cars still drive down them, or maybe they're only closed in one direction, and I think only on weekend days) with shopping and cafes along them, and there's a huge cathedral, the Palermo cathedral, towards the end of one of them.



Pictures of the cathedral, though they were taken on different days at different times:



A panoramic shot taken by Esther:



Next we headed over to a restaurant called Bellini for lunch, because we had a hankering for wood-fired-oven pizza. And, we ate really well there.



Right next to Bellini is the Martorana, which is a church and its official name is Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio (St Mary of the Admiral). It was built in the 12th century and contains gorgeous original mosaics. We're lucky we found this - we just wandered by randomly after lunch and went in for a look. It's definitely worth a visit if you're in Palermo.



The top of the church:



Next to the Martorana is a fountain with lots of different animal heads spouting water:



We had some gelato every day on this trip - sometimes twice - and the best we found was at Touring Cafe. They even put a little cone in it:



After our pizza and gelato, we weren't really hungry for dinner Saturday night. Instead, we headed up to a bar on the top of a department store and I took some pictures of the view. This view was of the plaza and the church of San Domenica, located right across the street from the airbnb we stayed at. Convenient. Palermo is surrounded by these lush green mountains; it's gorgeous.



A view looking away from the plaza:



The next morning, I got up and went for a little run. I took some pictures of the main streets with hardly any people on them except a few other runners. I love the way every street ends in a mountain (or the ocean, as was the case with one of my previous pictures but not either of the ones below).



I also got a great picture of the Massimo theater without hordes of people in front of it.



After my run, it was time for breakfast. A traditional breakfast in Sicily is apparently gelato in a brioche (sweet roll), and I just had to try it. We really did see other people eating it, both for breakfast and throughout the entire day. It's supposedly what you do to cool off in the summer. It was really good, but the one I ordered had way too much gelato in it.



After breakfast, we wandered around the old town a bit more, just enjoying the quaint narrow streets and the nice weather, and ended up at the Botanical Gardens. They weren't that great. Really nothing like the gardens we visited in Sri Lanka, or Cape Town. There was one neat pond with lots of turtles in it.



Next up, the harbor! There's no beach to hang out on here, just a marina where you could take your boat out and a little park along the water for walking and sunbathing (on benches). If you want to sit on a beach, you have to take a bus 20-25 minutes north to Mondello, which is apparently where everybody hits the beach in the summer.



For lunch, we went to Osteria Mercede, where we ordered pasta dishes and the best mussels I've ever eaten. The pasta was also delicious, and everything was fresh. We tried two different wines at lunch and they were both really good. We really liked a lot of nero d'avola and syrahs from Sicily, and the two below were the best ones we tried in my opinion.



After an afternoon nap, we headed out for dinner. I didn't take any food pictures there but, seriously, go there for dinner!! We had an appetizer of ricotta and rucola wrapped in prosciutto garnished with sweet/sour pumpkin chunks and the ricotta was so fresh. Then I had tuna with a pistachio crust and it was cooked perfectly - meaning more or less raw. And it was a huge portion too; I couldn't finish it but I certainly tried. Then, since we had read that this place had the best cannolis, we ordered one of those and it really was one of the best I've ever had. I mean, maybe all restaurants in Palermo are this good, but I doubt it. Osteria Ballaro and Osteria Mercede (above) were both amazing and I'm so glad we found them.



On Monday morning we went for a morning power walk, followed by a repeat breakfast at Spinnato, and then I had to catch the bus back to the airport to fly home... after one more gelato of course. I miss all the food more than I can express...

Here's a random street picture. I love all the narrow streets where you could just call across to your neighbor from your balcony and have a chat. It has this cozy, old-world feel to it. As long as you get along with your neighbors. Also, some of the narrow streets were kind of dirty especially if they were where people hung out to party late into the night. But most were just nice like this one.



After I left, my room mates stayed an extra night and went to a wine bar called Enoteca Picone. They said it was also quite nice there and they ended up buying some wine from there. Palermo is filled with wine bars, some nicer than others, and both Enoteca Picone and Cana Enoteca were good. We also wanted to try one called Vinodivino but we only had so much time to spend at wine bars!