PALERMO I—the “not your typical tourist experience” part

As we drove down out of Erice the weather cleared up a bit, but it still wasn’t clear. Since it wasn’t raining, and we had no real time constraints we decided to head over to the coast and the Scopello/Zingaro area to see what we would be missing. This is a lovely area, and I can see why it is so popular with people. We would have loved to have the time and weather to spend some time here exploring and walking.

Rather than taking the fastest inland route, we drove along the coast a ways towards the airport. There was a great overlook on the road by Castellammare del Golfo, and from above this looked like a town we would have definitely enjoyed exploring or staying in as a base. And, it is the same old mantra again here: If we hadn’t had luggage in the car……

Approaching the airport as we did from the west, we discovered there were no gas stations close to the airport. So after arriving at the airport, we ended up driving back west on the road about fifteen minutes in order to find a gas station to top off our tank. Car drop off was easy, and it was easy to find the bus into town.

The bus was a fine way to get into town from the airport, and our only little bit of confusion came as we kept getting deeper and deeper into the heart of the city and hadn’t heard our Politeama stop announced yet. But, we trusted that we hadn’t missed it since we knew ours was a central city stop.

Unfortunately, but as predicted, about five or ten minute before our stop the clouds let loose and the rain started pouring down. The owner of our apartment had asked us to call her just as we were leaving on the bus from the airport so she could arrange to meet us and walk us the few blocks from the airport bus stop to our apartment. We got off the bus, raised our umbrellas, got our suitcases out of the luggage compartment, and in the downpour started following the owner down the street dragging our wheeled suitcases behind.

It was during this rainy walk to our apartment that we had an incident that changed our visit to Palermo, not allowing us to do some of the sightseeing we had planned to do and adding an unexpected full afternoon spent at a place we never expected to be—the University of Palermo Pronto Soccorso (emergency room).

In the middle of the concrete jungle (no plants or bushes or shrubs) that is Palermo, my husband was stung multiple times through his sock by the largest hornet either of us has ever seen. It had to be close to two inches long. The first day the pain shooting all up his leg from the sting was so bad that he had to resort to a powerful painkiller. While not deathly allergic to insect stings, he is very definitely more sensitive than most people.

Despite all of the attention we were giving to his leg (and the cream that the local pharmacist had prescribed), by 48 hours after the bite it became apparent that he needed to see a doctor. He’d had a fever, the leg was swollen nearly to his knee, it was red and hot to the touch, and the main bite site looked as though it perhaps might be infected.

After I asked her for the name of an English-speaking doctor, the owner of our apartment had called a friend in the medical professions. The friend suggested that the University of Palermo was where we should go, and the owner went way beyond what is expected and was gracious enough to drive us there to the Pronto Soccorso .

We’d said from the start of our visit to the Pronto Soccorso that we needed care from English speakers, and the facility did their best to accomodate us. After asking for only his passport for ID at the triage center, my husband was taken back in to the treatment area to be evaluated. He came out saying he needed to see two different specialists in two diferent buildings on the medical campus, and we would be driven there. Soon enough a driver of a small medical van came and called our name, drove us over to another building, walked us up to the waiting area outside of a clinic, and told us to sit down to wait (all in Italian). Eventually a doctor who spoke a little English found us and took us into a room where he did a leg ultrasound that he pronounced normal. They were apparently looking for a possible thrombosis, something we had never thought of and the reason why Dr. Google is not always the best way to diagnosis.

After hand-writing an extensive note in Italian, he handed us the note, and told us to sit and wait again so a van could come get us. Soon a different driver came and escorted us back to the triage center. Since the ultrasound had been normal, the next specialist was supposed to be a dermatologist, but it turned out that all of them were now off duty for the weekend (this was Friday afternoon). Sounds like home! So, back to the triage center we went. This time I was allowed to go back in to the treatment area with my husband. Here he saw an English-speaking doctor, and they also had a translator on the phone for us.

After reading the report from the ultrasound and examining the leg, this doctor gave us scripts for three different prescriptions and told us to return on Monday for follow-up with the dermatologist. Since we were flying home on Monday we did not return to the medical center. (Obviously the typed dischare papers were all in Italian, but since they were typed I could at least read them in contrast to the lengthy hand-written note in not the best hand-writing. That evening at our apartment, I very carefully copied the Italian text into Google translate. Diagnosis—Attack by aggressive invertebrate.)

Then we were sent on our way. For those of us from the US, with our convoluted and screwed up medical system (okay, I’ve betrayed my bias here) this was amazing. No one asking for our insurance information. No one escorting us to the office to figure our payment plan. Italy believes that all people are entitled to free urgent medical care, whether they are citizens or not. So, we had our unplanned sightseeing observing the Italian medical system and were impressed.

As we waited for the ultrasound and the doctor we also had the chance to observe what was going on for other patients. Others were also being driven around from appointment to appointment in different buildings. But, quite a few were in their own pajamas and not the typical hospital gown one sees inthe US. At first I wondered if they had come to the emergency room in the middle of the night and that is why they were in their pajamas. But, I have since read that in Italy in many hospitals patients are expected to bring their own pajamas rather than being issued the standard gown. Seems a lot more practical to me too unless one is extremely ill and bed-ridden.

Maybe we were not able to see all of the usual tourist sights we had planned to see in Palermo, but we got some very interesting insights into the city and culture we were visiting. To me, this is a valuable and enlightening trade-off.

In addition, we have now figured out the mystery of why in the world previous occupants would have left nothing more than a bag of frozen peas in the freezer of one of our apartment in Modica. And, the next occupants of our Palermo apartment arrived to a one kilo bag of frozen peas they were probably wondering about too.

coming soon--the Palermo most tourists come to see

I am so sorry to hear about the medical emergency! I am very allergic to insect bites, so I would have been headed to the hospital too. Did the Italian prescriptions work? Is your husband OK? And yes, European medical care can be an interesting experience for Americans! (Even for me, who grew up in England but have lived in the US for decades. The contrast regarding unnecessary overhead is stark.)

He was given an antibiotic, a steroid, and an anti-itch/anti-inflammatory prescription. They did the job, and by a week later his leg was nearly back to normal. A follow-up visit with our doctor shortly after arrival home showed that these were close to the same thing he would have been prescribed here.

Yes, the medical visit was interesting. I'd say the triage center itself was probably similar to what we'd see here. OTOH, the angiology clinic where we were sent seemed a bit run down and in need of paint and sprucing up. I noticed that when the paper sheet cover was changed that the exam table had a rip in its upholstery. So what? We didn't care.

My elderly father was hospitalized here in the US a few years ago, and I was astounded at the visitors' waiting room/lounge outside his ward. Do hospital really need to decorate with waterfall walls? I know I can already hear some apologist commenting that a feature like this is calming in a stressful environment. But, really? Why spend the money?

" Why spend the money?"

Right. the doctor I saw in France on my last trip didn't even have a receptionist. Or anyone else, just a small waiting room, an office, an examining room, and him. Cost me all of 30 euros.

glad this had such a favourable outcome, julies - and that your experience of Italian medicine was so good.

looking forward to the rest of Palermo - outside the A&E department.

PALERMO—part II the regular tourist stuff

In case of a painful, swollen leg the usual advice is rest, ice and elevate leg. Obviously, the exact opposite of what the typical tourist plans to spend his time doing! I guess you can call it lucky that the first two days we were in Palermo it rained a lot, and we wouldn’t have been too motivated to wander around in the rain and sightsee anyway. This entire episode made me once again wonder what happens to those people whose itineraries are pre-planned down to the half hour (and I do see quite a few of them posted).

Prior to our trip I had spent a lot of time vacillating about location for an apartment and, for several different reaasons, finally settled on the more modern area near Teatro Massimo. Even though during our visit we definitely saw the appeal of the older parts of the city and saw some neighborhoods that we thought looked much more interesting than where we were, our location ended up being good for us because it was convenient for our needs.

The neighborhood we were in is commercial, and in fact there was a Foot Locker right next door. So, this isn’t the type of locale we’d notmally seek out. But, our apartment was very comfy (a good thing since we spent so much time inside of it), the owner was marvelously helpful, and we’d probably stay there again. The only strange thing about it was that the only side of the apartment with windows opened out to the next building’s blank wall perhaps six feet away. There was a shared terrace directly across the hall from us that would have been nice to make use of in better weather; we didn’t go out there once. http://www.vrbo.com/1133463a

It was mid afternoon by the time we arrived at our apartment in the downpour on our first day. So, day one was a bust and was lost due to the rain and the sting. Our only venture out was during a let-up in the rain to find the local grocery store. We even bought s few things to cook and just stayed in for dinner that evening.

On day two we had a couple hours where it (mostly) didn’t rain, and, despite the fact I didn’t think my husband should be up and walking around much, we set out to explore a bit of Palermo. Our first stop was a couple blocks away at Teatro Massimo so we could buy tickets for a performance of The Magic Flute. I’d intended to do this online before we left home, but this detail got lost in the shuffle of last minute trip planning.

This day we were out maybe three hours because of the rain and the fact that his leg was so swollen that his ankle would not bend, so walking wasn’t the easiest. (He finally agreed that he needed to be back home with his bag of peas on his elevated leg.) We liked what we saw of Palermo this day, and this continued to be our impression of Palermo. I guess I don’t get the overall “gritty” description some people give to Palermo, but then we’ve also spent a lot of time in India so perhaps my impressions are skewed. In fact, I’d like to return to Palermo for a longer visit some time, perhaps in the winter months when we want to get away from our crummy winters at home.

While walking we stuck our heads in the doors of a couple churches and had though about seeing some of the recommended chapels but decided against buying the entrance ticket package since we didn’t know how much we’d be able to do and see during our visit. I get the fact that churches need to maintain their facilities and this costs money, but it still seems odd to me to pay entrance fees to a church. We definitely enjoyed the ambience of the older neighborhoods and felt from the outside that this probably may have been a better fit for us as far as an apartment location. But, I also con’t know what the grocery shopping and restaurant scenario was in these locales.

We wandered down by the harbor and enjoyed our walk there and the brief walk along the sea. At one point in my apartment search I’d contemplated staying at Butera 28 in the Kalsa area. While walking we saw that apartment building, and I think that would have been a good location for us too. Our walk (we didn’t have a plan and were just ambling) also went by one of the markets (Vucciria I think) as its day was ending in early afternoon. We didn’t think it was a particularly appealing market that we’d go out of our way to see.

Our third day was our full day of non-tourist sight-seeing with our visit to the Pronto Soccorso.

By day four the weather had finally cleared up, and the medications had started to kick in, so we decided to try a visit to a real tourist venue. We were now down to our second to the last day in Palermo (a Saturday) and had three main places we wanted to see and only two days available and had someone with a gimp leg. Because we didn’t know how my husband’s leg would fare during the day of sightseeing, we decided to stay in Palermo and visit the Cathedral and the Royal Palace complex with the Palatine Chapel.

When visiting cities we like to walk whenever possible on our way to sightseeing venues because we are interested in more than just the sights themselves; we want to get a feel for the city itself. The walk to the Cathedral and Palace Complex from our Politeama neighborhood wasn’t long at all, maybe a half hour max as we slowly made our way there taking in all of our surroundings.

The Palatine Chapel is absolutely gorgeous with its profusion of gorgeous, golden mosaics. While tour groups whipped in and out (the English-speaking tour guides seemed to move their groups through most quickly), we prolonged our visit so as to be able to carefully take in the glories of the chapel. Our visit to the Cathedral included the treasury and the crypts, and this extra admission is well worth the price we paid and we recommend visiting these parts of the Cathedral. The Treasury contained some obscenely huge bishop’s rings that, before looking at their date, I would have assumed were centuries old. These were from the 1970s and 1980s and brought back to us the question of why in the world men who are supposed to serve God need such ostentatious and costly pieces of bling.

Although we are not particular fans of the opera genre, we enjoy classical music a lot so we wanted to take in an opera in the historic opera house. In fact, when we visited the ticket office we were wide open and decided we would schedule our Palermo visit around whichever performance had the best available seats. Luckily for us, the clerk at the ticket window spoke English, and we bought what she told us were very good seats in the tiered balconies.

Let’s just say that when we arrived at the performance we discovered that our perception of what are good seats differed from the clerk’s. The balconies are comprised of boxes of six seats. The three in the first row of the box are regular theatre seats; the three in the back row are bar stool height seats with backs. I hate this type of seating anywhere and do my best to avoid it. Now we were going to have to sit through a three hour opera in a $75 seat where the only place to put your feet was on the stool’s rung. We were disappointed, and this definitely put a huge damper on an evening we had been looking forward to, especially since the people in the first row who had the regular seats were leaning over the balcony impeding our views. The operformance itself was fine but not exceptional.

Our last day in Palermo was a Sunday, so public transportation was on a reduced schedule. There were many places in Palermo we hadn’t had a chance to see, but our two top choices were Cefalu or Monreale. We didn’t have time for both. Despite the fact that I really, really wanted to see the mosaics at Monreale, we opted for taking the train to Cefalu for the afternoon. We’ve seen the mosaics in Ravenna, at Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and at St. Mark’s in Venice and I loved them all so would have loved to also see the ones at Monreale. Cefalu won out in the debate because I wanted to check out the town as a possible place to stay if we’d make a future visit to Sicily.

Since it was Sunday, the trains weren’t all that frequent, and we basically had choices of 10:00 or 1:00. We chose the 1:00 because we wanted to have a lazy morning with a leisurely walk to the train station from our apartment. Via Maqueda in Palermo is closed to traffic on Sundays, so we joined the throngs of locals enjoying a stroll. During our walk we passed by the Ballero market and walked through there too. We hadn’t planned in any extra time for sightseeing on our way to the train station so weren’t able to stop and explore it thoroughly, but it seemed much more interesting the the Vuiccera market we’d seen on a previous walk.

Cefalu is in a great setting on the water, and we enjoyed our afternoon there. In some ways it might be a good base, but I don’t know. Of course, when I mentioned returning to stay for a while as a base, my husband’s first comment was to ask where we would park if we stayed in the old (and most interesting) part of the town. We walked, visited the church and sat in the piazza in front of the church for drinks and snacks. The time had just switched back an hour, and daylight savings time had ended. The fact that it was now dark an hour earlier truly made a difference, and we were so happy that we had planned our dates so that we visited when there was that extra afternoon hour of light.

When we returned to the train station, we discovered that the train we were planning to take was going to arrive more than an hour late. Since it was a Sunday, with its reduced schedule, we were fortunate in that there was another train scheduled for an hour later. Since our intended train was experiencing a further delay, after sitting in the train station waiting for nearly 1.5 hours we hopped on this other train and rode back to Palermo in the dark. This is a train trip with lovely scenery, so if possible, I’d advise taking a train while it is light enought to be able to enjoy the scenery.

Our departure the following morning was an 8:00 flight to Rome where we’d make a connection to the US. Our landlady had the name of a driver who would take us to the airport for 25 euros, and we took her up on the idea. Unfortunately, Alitalia wouldn’t let us do an online check in since the last of our three flight sequence was a Delta flight. This meant we had to arrive at the airpport earlier than we had planned. Since we now needed to leave the apartment at 5:30, the price for the ride rose by 10 euros. This was fine with us.

All in all, we’d very definitely recommend Sicily as a place to visit. The food was fabulous, costs were quite reasonable we thought, and there is a huge variety of things to do and places to see. We spent three weeks there, but I can easily list off a number of things we just were not able to fit into our time there, things I’d like to return to see. Another thing that called to us about the island is that the climate seems such that it could be a nice place to visit during the colder months when other parts of Europe are not very nice weather.

Winging it as far as lodging worked, but it was additional time and work on the ground. We appreciated the flexibility this gave us, but the trade off was that I needed to spend some time online in the evenings planning our next stop and scouting out places to stay. If I had been super organized, I could have done this at home ahead of time and arrived with a list of two or three potential lodgings in places that I knew for sure we wanted to visit. Unless traveling in peak August season, we’d travel this way again in Sicily, making reservations as we went along.

We love Sicilian food and miss it. So, finally, here is a fabulous recipe we made the other night with some of the salted Sicilian capers we brought home with us (you could probably also make it with regular capers I’d think).

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/fo...iotta-51112430

Sorry you didn't get to Monreale, but there's always next time!

" it still seems odd to me to pay entrance fees to a church"

Well, you don't have to pay if you go to a service, but otherwise you're really treating it as a tourist site, not a church. I recommend visiting Westminster or St. Paul's in London for choral Evensong, but not sure whether RC churches have a similar service.

DId you eat out at all in Palermo, or were they all apartment meals?

So sorry about your husband's sting. Glad you were able to have such good care, but too bad it put a damper on Palermo. Your husband is a trooper.

Funny the parking in Cefalu is mentioned. It's the only place we visited that we absolutely could not find a place to park. We drove around and around for quite a bit -- it was horribly congested and not a space to be found. This was in May so likely more people in town.

And yes, Monreale will be there for your next visit. I'm a huge mosaic fan and outside of some of the ones in Ravenna, Monreale is my favorite.

We'll see if we get back to Sicily and Palermo so I can visit Monreale. Of course, when one gets home then all of the other marvelous places in the world start to cram out the idea of re-visiting a place. There is only so much time to travel and so many places to see.

We were in Cefalu on a Sunday afternoon when, of all things, there was some type of mini car race (maybe go-karts?? sorry cars are not my thing) set up on the streets between the older and newer areas, so we had to walk around that. We had taken the train in so don't know about parking, but we could see that even in the end of October it would be a problem for people who wanted to stay in the older section of town.

The one real restaurant we went to (we did some pizza take-out) in Palermo was fabulous and very reasonably priced. In fact, we tried to go back again on our last night in town (a Sunday), but we didn't have a reservation and couldn't get in. Osteria Mercede is not too far from Teatro Massimo.

Glad you got a nice meal. Like others, I am very sorry to hear of your husband's mishap and glad to know he was so well served by his Sicilian doctor. (There is a 160-year-old novel about a caring Sicilian doctor called Doctor Antonio that set off a stampede of tourism from Great Britain to the Italian Riviera, where the novel is set. It's partly a romance (the doctor heals a lovely young British girl who breaks her leg while traveling) and partly political, seeking support for the unification of Italy (when the Sicilians were "conquered). It's a bit antique, but online if you ever get in the mood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Antonio_(novel)

Anyway, I once spent a week in January in Palermo and it was really very nice. Mild weather for sightseeing and the smell of oranges everywhere. That's the season for them. As the winter progresses, Sicily tends to get more rain, but typically January is dry.

Wonderful TR julie. It's going in my 'file' :)

Unfortunate you had to test it, but glad the medical system worked for you.

Many thanks for the excellent report, julies - you have given me a lot of ideas for my upcoming trip. I'm especially pleased to hear that you enjoyed Palermo as much as you did.

And, as others have said, sorry to hear that you and your husband had to go through the medical system, but am glad to hear that he was ultimately okay (and able to continue the rest of your trip).

Yes, Sicily is an island we really enjoyed and definitely can see ourselves returning to. My husband's sting and my earlier fall while visiting Noto Antica made us realize just how quickly circumstances can change while traveling (and in life). Everything turned out well for us, and we were thankful for the Italian medical system but hope we'll never need to test it out again.

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