Day 10 (4/14) Travel Palermo - Rome - Sigillo

We walked Mondello till the weather got nasty. High winds and drizzle. We made it to our hotel before the downpour. It is really a beautiful hotel. Built in 1950 but recently completely renovated. It has a real mid-century feel, in the best possible sense. It’s crescent shaped, with wide hallways and large heavy wooden doors. The rooms are spacious, with big windows and with all modern conveniences . Mondello is really a pretty resort town. Lots of big mansions for the wealthy, but most of them seemed empty, with shutters down so they may be just summer homes.
Impressions of Sicily
The countryside is beautiful. Wherever you go, you get breathtaking views – mountains, hills, the sea, beautiful towns on hilltops, antique ruins popping here and there. Even the view from an awfully crowded ring road around Palermo is feast for the eyes. Everything is green from the abundance of rain and the hillsides are colorful with yellow, pink, blue and lavender flowers. The cities are a different story. There appears to be little maintenance or upkeep. Even in Mondello there are palm trees with 10 years of dead fronds covering the tree. It was a little surprising that even some pretty important tourist attractions seemed to be either closed without any explanation, or under renovation (probably a good thing) or in need of care. Maybe because April is not tourist season. When we arrived at the airport we saw lots of construction and Bo remarked “all of Sicily is a work in progress”. When we entered the terminal there was a sign in English “Work In Progress”. That’s part of Sicily’s charm.

We arrived in Sigillo around 5 pm. The flight from Palermo was easy. We had some problems with our car rental in Rome. They tried to “upgrade” us three levels up to a very large Volvo because the car we originally rented was not ready, but we refused and decided to wait for our car, a reasonably sized Mercedes. It was pouring all the way to Sigillo. We took the wrong route, too and because the road was brand new, the GPS didn’t recognize it so we had to stop and ask for directions. We love the apartment and Sigillo seems to have a beautiful location. We’ll explore tomorrow. Hopefully it will stop raining.