13 Nov 2024 Palermo

Today we are going on a free walking tour at 10 am. Our 55 dollar a night room includes breakfast. Our room is cleaned every day and it's nice to come back to tightly made beds. There are three single beds, night tables, a wardrobe and a desk. There's a fridge that doesn't work - the man at the desk says none of the fridges work but if we want we can put things in their fridge. No, a minor inconvenience, but we will get by.

I have the same thing for breakfast but opt for Cappuccino and today they have very ripe persimmons.
It's a long walk to the meeting point, about 16 blocks.
Along our way we pass the second most important Performing Arts Theatre, home of the Symphony Teatro Politeama:

We are a big group for the walking tour, 28 people. The guide speaks heavily accented English. We proceed to the opera house which is the third largest in Europe:

She walks us through two markets, one is selling fish, and the other tablecloths. Every street of the old town seems to be lined with souvenir shops. There has been a town here for thousands of years. Phonecians from Lebanon were here on the west side first, Greeks were on the east side of Sicily. But over the centuries the Romans, the Normans, the Spanish and others have ruled this island.
The Church of San Cataldo is a Catholic church located at Piazza Bellini. Erected in 1154 it is a notable example of the Arab-Norman architecture which flourished under Norman rule. The church is annexed to that of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio.

The Church of Santa Maria dell'Ammiraglio was built in 1143 by Giorgio di Antiochia, admiral of King Roger II.

Fontana Pretoria, an example of the Tuscan Renaissance, occupies the entire center of the Pretoria Square, overwhelming. A very busy work of art which was originally built for a private residence in Florence and then purchased for an exorbitant sum 20 years later by the Senate of Palermo, an example of corruption in government in the sixteenth century. The people of Palermo dubbed it The Fountain of Shame.
San Giuseppe dei Teatini is the church behind the Fontana Pretoria:

The Praetorian Palace, also known as Palace of the Eagles houses the mayor and the offices of the municipality of Palermo.

We saw the outside of numerous Catholic churches in the first 100 minutes - stairs without rails and a steep hill was involved it's 22 C by 1030 and hot in the sun. My feet are sore and I am tired. We have been on a lot of these tours over the years and some are better, such as the one we took in Dublin. The tour today involved a lot of walking and very little information.
Since the walking tour was underwhelming and we were thirsty we stopped early and circled back to the restaurant where we had coffee yesterday. Yesterday they didn't charge coperto but today they tacked an additional four euros onto the bill. The bill was 13 euro plus the four, seems excessive but we pay. We shared a pizza which was very good, it had artichokes on it, ham, good.

I got Jeff to take my picture on the steps to the opera house. I pretended I had been shot but to the average onlooker it would have looked like I was laying down or maybe trying to get back up. A man struck up a conversation with Jeff. Jeff says That's my mom.
When I sat up the man waved at me. Pretty funny. You had to be there.

So that was our day.