Starting a Sicilian Adventure

This trip to Italy has contained some new travel experiences for us. For the first time we booked an overnight ferry from Naples to Palermo, in the North East of Sicily. For Kathy the memories of several departures from Naples by ship came flooding back and as we found the actual vessel we were to spend the night on, levels of excitement rose again! It was a HUGE ship, capable of carrying hundreds of cars, trucks and people! The entire bow section of this vessel had opened up like a huge mouth to gorge itself on the vehicles overflowing the city of Naples and take some south.

As this monster departed the wharf, no tugs were in attendance, but the massive power of the vessel's side thrusters stirred the entire port area like an egg beater. Other smaller vessels pulled on their moorings as the temporary whirlpool our ship created was like a river rapid.

We arrived in Palermo, Sicily's capital city early on a Sunday morning. The announcements over the ship's PA were barely intelligable in either Italian or English, but we got the gist that sleeping in was not an option. As we blearily emerged from our cabin we found it was raining. The next announcement said something about "for 'security reasons' a bus would be provided for passengers without their own vehicles".... Okayyy... We wondered what the nature of the security risk was - was it us pillaging goods on the wharf or was it what Sicily is famous for??

When we disembarked we found ourselves and many other passengers standing on the wharf in the rain looking up and down for a bus. The only thing there was an eager taxi driver. I asked someone where the bus was ("dov'e' l'autobus?"). His reply in Italian was "what for?". That stumped me right there. Fortunately Kathy came along and used the right Italian term which is "navetta" for the type of bus that we were going to use. It would be coming soon. As we began to contemplate the meaning of "soon", standing in the rain, we noticed some people beginning to walk off with their suitcases. What to do? Kathy began to follow them, but for some reason, I called her back. Within 5 minutes we knew what 'soon' meant and the navettas turned up. Then we knew what the reason for the little buses was - it was MILES to the city. If we had tried to walk it we would have been soaked, tired and grumpy (and probably lost).

The first priority was a coffee. This proved again another thing we have noticed about Italy. Every region has its own nomenclature and customs for Italian breakfast of coffee and a cake. Sicilians and Neapolitans looked blankly at us when we ordered our standard Roman breakfast of a 'cafe latte con doppio caffe' e una bomba' (double shot latte with a donut filled with cream custard). What turns up for both items in Palermo indicates theyhad no idea what Kathy was talking about!

A chap at work had been in Sicily a month or so earlier and had told me the most stressful thing he had done in his life was to drive in Palermo!

Therefore, as we picked up our rental car from downtown Palermo early on a Sunday morning, we thought we would have the best possible opportunity to drive OUT of a still dormant Palermo hoping to never have to do that again.

The chap in the rental car hire was very taciturn and noted we were returning the vehicle to Catania Airport on the other side of Sicily. He thought he should tell us that it was likely that the airport would be closed to commercial air traffic by then as it would be requisitioned by the military for the war on Iraq! Secondly, we noted that our insurance was invalid if we parked the vehicle in an 'unmanned' car park and many other exclusions! We knew we were in for an adventure right then.

Within 1km of the car pickup we had had one near miss and taken two wrong turns in a maze of one way streets!!

However, our mantra for Italian car hireage (which can be divorce fodder) was a quotation we learnt from an Italian friend in Milan on our last trip - "con calma, tranquilli, senza stress!!". With the assistance of Apple Corporation, we did find our way out of Palermo and to our delightful Agriturismo in the remote hills above the city.

We had a lovely warm welcome there from both man and dog!