Ciao from Sicily

Hey guys, we are currently in Palermo, Sicily. Palermo is the capital of Sicily, or maybe just the most important city in Sicily. I should do more research in the future. 

The trip here was an exhausting 12 hour train ride (about the same amount of time from los angeles to taipei, taiwan). We had some entertainment: hours of playing gin, cribbage, and watching jack bauer kicking ass. Oh, and we watched the Mummy 3, which sucked but a good time waster. Oh the joys of pirating! 

Sicily reminds me of downtown Seattle-- and very much not like Rome. First of all the roads here are PAVED which is amazing. In rome there are all sorts of cobble stones that are out there to break your ankle or if you are lucky your neck. bus rides in Palermo is quite smooth, whereas bus rides around Rome is having a seizure in and around your balls. (i guess this only applies to jason). Secondly there are lots of designer stores and tall buildings, just like walking around in seattle. then there's a fish market not too far away, which reminds me of Pike's Fish Market. 

The streets are relatively clean and there are lots of huge open spaces for people to loaf around. In Rome its so packed and congested there's not much loafing unless one is at a historical monument like the Colosseum or St. Peter's. 

Our "hotel" is very interesting. It's someone's apartment and she and her husband has two extra rooms (they are quite big) and they let travelers/tourists rent out the room. It's cheap: 45 euros a night, and split that in two and its only 22.50 euros a night. We get a kitchen with food and drinks included, a communal bathroom (with no shower curtains, which sucks for the unskilled shower-ers like Miya) a roof terrace, and a pet dog that is extremely shy and won't come up to you. One bad part of this "hotel" is that it is extremely cold at night. even body warm and down comforters got the best of me and yeah, our first night was pretty miserable. Jason woke up with a head cold and his nose was running like a snot faucet. Miya was just stuffy. 

The first day of wandering around was okay... there were some complications and we will spare the details about it, and we had to cut our sight-seeing short for the day. Sicily really take their time with the siesta, unlike Rome where some places do take the siesta, and some places they dont. tomorrow we are making a trip to Monreale, which is supposed to be really awesome but to tell you the truth i have no clue what it is famous for. will update you soon.

ciao for now!

J&M