Giorno 95, 11 April: Inferno to Paradiso

Politeam Affiti Hotel, Palermo, Sicily, Giorno 95. Inferno to Paradiso

     

      Waking up at 6 in the morning on a ship in a cramped room—I mean ‘sauna’—was disorienting, yet I did surprisingly have a decent sleep. My friends had given me a bed to sleep in, Vinnie and Joe doubling up on other beds and then Vinnie ending up more comfortable on the floor. It was Vinnie who had told me that the top bunk was free when I did enter the room last night. (I had originally placed myself on the floor near the door until then.) The ceaseless brother-sister play-fighting between Vinnie and Devon had ceased in their exhaustion, only to restart later on in the day in full force.

      While waiting to unload from the ship, our group endured emotional hell. One review online told of someone being lucky to be alive while staying at the hotel we were about to go to in Palermo. I felt Joe’s mind in fearful darkness right next to me, and in a minute he explained how we may just find another place. He is the unspoken leader of this trip, and we agreed at this as we generally do for big decisions. I was also in fearful darkness, like the rest, and the fear of death carries a sickly and heart-stopping edge to anticipation. At some level, I knew anxiety and fear were filling in the blanks of ignorance and uncertainty, but I was still terrified. Vito was in remorse over advocating to go to Palermo.

      Upon arrival, we treaded ten blocks, relieved at our early hour of entering the city, and eventually found ourselves in a comforting reception room of our hotel. The elderly man issuing us the signature forms in Italian was a character, requiring one of us to show him a passport. Devon complied but faced trouble in deciphering his questions. Despite my unofficial role as a sort-of translator on this trip—still, I only know some of the phrases and words from the little Italian book I bought in Milan—I was unable to help out in a big way in this case. It was a group effort to get through his genial questions at 8 in the morning and we eventually made it upstairs to a beautiful apartment that we’ve booked for two nights. Kitchen, bathroom, extra bedroom, wifi. Perfect. The review had been written 6 years ago, and this elder hotel manager was definitely a kind-hearted man, bringing us up an Ethernet cable and towels and sheets throughout our first hour here.

      After a nice four-hour sleep into the hour of noon, we awoke and were ready for the day. Vito and I looked up what there was to do in Palermo, and the top ten list online included trying certain foods and visiting yet another Duomo and Vittorio Emanuele (this time a marketplace). Conclusion: there is not that much to do as a tourist in Palermo.

      We made the most of it and headed off to the beach by bus. It is much more of a linguistic struggle here to be understood, since Palermo contains far fewer English speakers than the other cities we’ve visited. We finally got the bus fare location and amount correct, though.

      Like Naples, the sight of the beach brightened my outlook of the day and this point in the trip. The inferno of the ferry’s cabin ‘sauna’ and the fear of death quickly evaporated at the sight of the magnificent ocean. I had never seen the beautiful gradations of blue on the water: from shore to the sea, the blue of the water got steadily darker. First, a white turquoise, to teal, and then to dark navy blue resembled this beautiful azure progression of the Sicilian ocean. The gentle waves gently pushed towards shore while the sun was more beautiful than it had been in Naples.

(Photo Courtesy of Caitlin Hughes)

      We felt the sand through our toes as we wandered down the beach towards a line of restaurants. Vinnie started up annoying Devon once more, kicking his small golden football (soccer ball) at the back of her legs. Caitlin expressed how she was in her element, being a surf teacher back home in Australia, and both she and Devon wouldn’t have minded sitting down and soaking in sun right then. But others of us were hungry. We finally arrived at a ristorante called Da Peppino, and our waiter was a character, sitting down next to us after serving the food, casting away our newly bought sunscreen that obstructed a picture he was taking of us, and teasing me for mispronouncing the word for ‘six’ by saying Spanish instead of Italian.

      The food was glorious: I had salad like most of us but also a plate of risotto and mussels in a rich tomato sauce for only ten euros. It was worth it, especially considering that all I had eaten since 6am had been a few potato crisps.

      We strolled back to our first landing point on the beach, where we set up towels (well Devon did, the rest of us just stripped down to bathing suits and worried about how we would dry later). After the guys played chicken and the girls went into the cold Sicilian waters, I joined in the waves too and swam for the first time all year. It felt really nice to feel my hand and injured knee in the cold water, and swimming a little of all four strokes was utterly refreshing. All of us entered the water soon enough and played with Vinnie’s football in a circle. The one pitfall to this paradiso of sunshine and waves was Devon’s loss of an expensive ring. Still, the overall experience melted away the inferno of the morning.

      After the beach we quickly decided on gelato as we waited for the bus. At some point, Vito asked Joe the frequent question that arises whenever Joe pulls out his phone to play angry birds: ‘So how are those birds doing?’ ‘They are SO angry. They’re FUMING,’ as Joe replies playfully.

      Later, Caitlin, Joe, and Vito made an incredibly delicious Italian, family-style dinner for all of us of bruschetta and pasta lavished in an amazing, warm pasta sauce.   In such a good moment as this, I got to thinking how I have really enjoyed the company of the people on this trip—we’ve definitely bonded through the thick and thin, the good places and the bad. This dinner completed a day that turned out to be paradise.  

Caitlin, Devon, Joe, Me, Vito in his apron, and Vinnie