Palermo, Sicily

We went and visited Sicily for 10 days. It was fabulous!!!! I can definitely say that I love Sicily. I loved the food, I loved the landscape, I loved the people. I did NOT love the way they drove, the beggers, or the weather for 5 out of the 10 days. The food was absolutely divine. There is something they do to their spaghetti down there that made me want to eat spaghetti over and over for 10 days straight! I'm not sure what the mystery ingredient was but I'm on a mission to find out.  We ate at a place called Klika near our hotel and it was awesome. It was there that we tasted our first Sicilian wine, Nero D'Avola and it was great!

We stayed at the Hotel Garibaldi which was much better than I was expecting. It was close enough that we walked to everything and it was very modern and had funky twists here and there. It also had an AMAZING breakfast that was included in the price of a room. Normally in Italy breakfast is a brioche and a coffee, but this place had eggs and bacon, the normal cereal, yogurt, breads, desserts, it was quite the spread! It also had sitting areas and a small bar and business office. For the price(63 Euros a night in the low season!) this hotel is totally worth it and if I was ever in Palermo I'd stay there again!

We also ate at a place called Spinnato near the hotel, this is where the crazy pigeons and beggars showed up. They send their kids into the tables to beg for money. However since the kids were dressed almost as nice as my own kid I have a hard time believing that they are destitute. They skipped happily away when people told them no, it was heartbreaking. However all I've read told me that the mafia controls a lot of the beggars in Palermo, so by giving them money you're essentially giving it to the mafia. Lovely.

We also ate at a lovely little family run restaurant and I took a card because it was great and I wanted to be able to send other people there, well do you think I can find the card....nope. 

The driving is INSANE. I'm not kidding, you may have read my rants on the northern Italians and their piss poor driving habits. WELL....the Sicilians make the Milanese look like driving miss daisy. They are VERY aggressive drivers in Sicily and they pretty much just ignore all the rules of the road and its a free for all!!!!!! I thought I was going to have a heart attack for the first few days but by the day we came home I didn't even blink an eye when someone overtook us on a blind corner on a tiny mountain road...meh.....they're Sicilian, they'll figure it out :)

I definitely wouldn't miss Monreale if I were in Palermo, the Cathedral is beautiful and the two euros to walk to the top is definitely worth it!!!!!

All in all, if you're the type of person who can't appreciate beauty in urban decay, then Palermo might not be for you. The small streets, the markets, the theatres and cathedrals are beautiful, but you do have to walk past beggars and a bit of squalor to get there!!!!!

Reese looking out the window in out hotel 

Teatro Massimo- The Opera House in Palermo renowned for its wonderful accoustics. It is apparently the biggest Opera house in Italy and the third largest in Europe. 

The market street. It was insane!!! The fish men were yelling back and forth at each other. Then one seller would randomly start yelling prices out. There were people everywhere, fish on ice, amazing looking vegetables. There were even stalls selling all the common cleaning products. You seriously could have gotten everything you needed from this market. It was really fun to walk down!

Some of the fish on sale in the market. 

A fairly accurate example of what the streets in old town Palermo look like. We were walking from the Teatro Massimo, through the market to end up at the Duomo. There were crazy small roads, and laundry hanging from everywhere. Buildings were crumbling down, it was exactly what I thought Sicily would look like. Beautiful in a very urban decay kind of way!

Traditional Sicilian carts. They were very brightly coloured and lined up down the street outside of a marionette museum.

Don't worry he's not dead :) This was in the Duomo piazza. In Sicily apparently people just let their dogs out in the morning and they wander at will during the day returning home at night!!!! Seriously most of the dogs we saw wandering about were too healthy looking to be strays, and a lot had collars on. This one was just basking in the sunshine!!!!

The Duomo piazza in Palermo

It was strongly influenced by the Arabs that conquered here!!! It was started in 1185 and at one point actually became a Mosque after the Saracens captured Palermo. 

Reese getting her shoe fixed

Inside the Duomo

This is Reese's reaction to the aggressive pigeons at the restaurant that we ate at. I'm not kidding when I say that they would dive bomb tables to get at the potato chips that were coming out with people's drinks!!!!! Thankfully we didn't have any potato chips! They would dive bomb and people would go scattering away from the table, glasses falling over, it was pure chaos :)

The view driving on the Autostrada towards the west coast

I was quite surprised at how mountainous it was, I wasn't expecting that. 

Pretty view towards the peninsula

So contrary to popular belief, the roads in Sicily are totally NOT third world. They are quite good compared to say...Saskatchewan!!!!! No but seriously they were great on the Autostrada and small and windy once off the Autostrada, which is to be expected.

Artsy pic on the way to Segesta to see the temple

The Doric Temple at Segesta. Segesta was the political centre for the Elymian people, one of the indiginous people of Sicily.  This is one of the best preserved temples in the world of this type. Built in the late 5th century BC!!!!!! Experts believe that this temple was never actually finished, and no one knows how it remained this intact for this long!!! You think as an unfinished temple it would have been plundered for its stone a LONG time ago!

Yes you can take a bus up the hill to the archeological site, but why do that when its just a short 20 min walk to the site????*LIARS!!!!* it was NOT a short walk because it was straight up hill!!!! hahahaha we got great views though, walked through fields of wildflowers and got some great exercise doing it though :)

The view of the temple while climbing the path

Richard and Reese on the path with some wildflowers

The view...it was FABULOUS!

The old city walls

The  archeological site. Its is unknown how long a city has actually existed here, but definitely back to the 5th century BC, and probably long before that. It was pretty interesting to see the ruins and to read the descriptions of how the town might have looked back then. 

Ruins of the church

The view again!!!

The theatre, it was awesome!! Look at that view!!!!!

Richard and Reese in the Segesta theatre. 

Reese and Mama

getting a ride from Daddy!

Mama playing tour guide barbie :) I think I'm pointing out rooms in the castle. 

The Segesta Temple- 5th century BC

Monreale Cathedral just outside Palermo. This cathedral is decorated with a gazillion little glass pieces of tile to create mosaics. It really was absolutely beautiful, and it was crazy to think how long it would have taken someone to do this back in the 12th century!!!

The alter

A close up of the tile work, this cathedral is HUGE...and it is completely decorated in tile!!!!!!!

The cloisters, viewed from the walkway above

The view of Palermo and the coast from the top of the cathedral

The view out the other side

a look at the town of Monreale, nestled into the hillside.

The Norman Corridors. It was a long, dim hallway going up to the roof of the cathedral. It was also quite short and I was sure I was going to bang my head on the ceiling!!!

artsy take on the window with the mosaics 

This picture was just to show the difference in dress. The Sicilians were all bundled up and it was lovely and warm out!! Richard is in short sleeves and everyone else was in parkas and toques :)

Hiatus Announcement :)

Well like a lot of my fave tv shows, I am going on hiatus for two weeks!!! I promise there will be lots of pictures at the end of it :)

Well I was practicing making a "hazy" picture using sunlight and I think I definitely achieved hazy!!!!

This is Kermit. We found him in our backyard and after staring at him for a while and contemplating keeping him, we let him go down by the stream away from the snapping jaws of our two hounds!! He was super cute  :)

These are Claire's(my cousin-in-law) shoes. They are fabulous and I thought that they deserved an artistic homage :)

This is Reese working the magic on Daddy because she wanted something on Friday night before pizza!!!

Project 365: Day 55

Hyacinth is one of my favourite flowers because when they are in bloom the whole house smells like Spring. I bought these ones as bulbs in a container and they've been down in the kitchen for weeks now and have only just flowered. So I cut them and put them in this vase instead.

Catching up on my Project 365

So I post them on Facebook because its super easy to do that from lightroom. But for some reason it won't let me export directly to this blog anymore so its getting neglected. I promise one of these days I'll actually sit down and fix that!!!!

It helps that I have an very imaginative child on days when I have no idea what to take pictures of!!! This is Reese playing "Vet" with Henry. I looked over and thought, aha, this is what I should try and capture. So I hid in the corner with my camera and snapped away. Neither of them paid any attention to me. Reese had lined up her playdough cutters on Henry's side, then put her chart next to them and I could hear her telling Henry "I do your chart" Then she apparently decided that he needed medicine which is why the spoon is next to him and then he actually stuck it in his mouth in the top picture which sent Reese into fits of giggle as she was saying to him" Henry take your medicine" "You sick?!" and I'm pretty sure she would have let him eat the spoon if I hadn't stopped her!!!!

Me peering in at bath time with Reese and Daddy. Caught a picture of Daddy's Alligator leading a sneak attack with the spray on Reese!!!
Today is Saint David's Day and I desperately tried to find some daffodils in the village to take a cool picture with but nope.....so bath picture it is!

Today was a lazy day, I was already editing over 300 pictures from Rome so I just didn't have a creative bone left in my body!!!! Reese insisted on wearing her Snow White dress all day, she only took it off to go for a nap and then put it right back on again when she was done. She's never really liked it much before today!!!!!

This is Jenny, Amelie(who is asleep!!), Reese and I standing under one of the ruins in the Roman forum. We are two of a much larger group of ladies and the only two residing on this continent!!!!!! So we thought we'd continue on the tradition of a "group shot" at the meet-ups and here is our take on it :)

Saturday's a RUGBY day!!!!!!!
This is us at the Wales vs Italy 6 Nations Game. We originally planned the trip because we thought my cousin would be playing but unfortunately he was injured in a club game before the start of the tournament, so we decided to go and watch the game anyways :)
It was SO FUN! Kind of nerve wracking but a great atmosphere!!!

Friday we met up with our friends Jenny, Christian and Amelie and went and toured the Vatican and St.Peter's Basilica. Yes.....we saw the Sistene Chapel, it was pretty awesome!!! My picture of the day is of the alter in St. Peter's Basilica. Seriously, I thought I'd seen some impressive churches here in Italy but this one takes the cake! It's absolutely INSANE how elaborately decorated this Basilica is. It actually blows my mind to think that this was finished in 1626!!!!!!

Thursday was a busy day!!! So I snapped this on our very short flight to Rome :) This is Reese stuffing her face full of panini!

Well it was self portrait day again today!!!
Top left- us kissing
middle left- Us talking about Sarah the doll
bottom left- Reese looking in my ears
Top right- listening to my heart
Middle left- she actually gagged me with the spoon full of fake medicine in this picture!!!!!!
Bottom right- Look at the calm on that face while she jabs me with a "needle" Cool as a cucumber and posing for the cameras too. She might be a doctor one day, perhaps not a nurse, we don't have time to pose for cameras!!!!!!

We are rat sitting Daisy and Cookie the rats for the Griers because they are in Paris at EuroDisney!!! this is Cookie the rat saying hello to Reese. She's pretty obsessed with them, asking how they are doing all day long even though Daisy had a nibble at her finger this morning! To be fair she was told about twenty times NOT to put her finger through the cage!!!!!
They are basically like big hamsters with tails :)

One of my photography assignments last week, posing her in different angles to the window to see how the light hits her face. She is intently watching out the window in this one because we had just seen a helicopter flying really low a few minutes before we started taking pictures and she was watching in case it came back I think!!!

Outside the Milan Aquarium. Its located in this really cool old building just inside Sempione Park. Its very small, but Reese seemed to enjoy herself and it was free so really we can't complain!!!!!

Playing with Cadbury in the fields 

the gang at pizza on Friday Night. Every Friday a big group of us eat at this pizza place. It varies, one Friday it was only four of us, but we've been as large as 21 people!! Daniel the owner is great, seriously amazing pizza! So if you come and visit us we'll take you here for a pizza and vino :)

Self portrait day today. I'm aware I look perturbed in the top picture!!! I was getting frustrated with the whole self portrait thing because its a lot harder than it looks and so I was staring down the camera daring it to take an out of focus picture AGAIN. (Cause its totally the camera's fault right!?!?) However even if I look annoyed I still like it for some reason. The bottom three are my outtakes, like the nerd-o that I am!!!!!
Seriously, I'm glad I joined a project 52 where I have to take a self-portrait once a week because I had no idea how hard it was, and how AWFUL I look in about 95% of the pictures I take while attempting it!! I'm certainly learning my "angles" CHIN OUT!!!!

I know it doesn't look like one but its actually something I drew on the chalkboard and then took a picture of! I blackened the black and tweaked the colours. The quote was added in PSE. I got some bad news this morning about a wonderful lady that I worked with at the RGH ER. It made me really sad that I'm not at home, and that I won't be able to attend her memorial. I like this quote because I think its true that people live on not only just through their children, but by all the people they have touched. Lois was a charge nurse on my unit, and a legend in our department. She taught me so much in the few years that I was there. She was like a little tornado whirling around the department, managing to cram patients in every nook and cranny!!! I will never forget that, or her, or any of the things she taught me about being a better nurse.
Rest in Peace Lois.

How to see a doctor in Italy

First of all apologies for my lack of blogging, I've been taking two photography courses and seem to be unable to keep up with everything. Plus the kiddo has been home sick quite a bit in Feb and that severely decreases the amount of time I can spend on the computer!!!!

How to see a doctor in Italy

Well, Reese started talking like she had a frog in her throat Sunday evening, and started to produce pus galore from her eyes(ahhhh its charming being a parent!) By Monday evening the kid sounded like she was breathing through a very small hole so I looked down her throat and sure enough, her tonsils were taking over!!! I called the doctor on her cell phone(which is shared between all the moms in this village!!) and she said she could come first thing in the morning to see Reese.
So at 10:00 she rolls up on her scooter with a fancy red helmet and a matching FANTASTIC red leather doctor's bag!!!!!!! AWESOME!!!!
She did a very thorough examination on Reese, who took a shine to her immediately. The exam and the history taken was all done in our living room and she examined Reese on the couch, pulling all sorts of things out of the fabulous red leather bag to use.
Now I'd heard from the other moms that this particular pediatrician preferred using naturopathic remedies to medicine if she could. But one look down Reese's throat had her writing a prescription for an 8 day course of antibiotics!!!!  What's kind of great here though is that they prescribe lactobacillus(enterogerminia) at the same time to try and ward off the diarrhea that we all know comes with kids taking antibiotics.
I was saying to her how I think its wonderful that a pediatrician does house calls here in Italy because I can't see any doctor's back home doing that and she said her theory is that if she has an office that all the sick kids come into, then one comes in with vomiting and other one with tonsillitis and the next week they've just switched illnesses!!! She prefers to go to the patient, which I think is just AWESOME :) The visit was 90 Euros so about $130 but we can claim it back from insurance so I don't mind at all.
She also advised just as she was leaving to take Reese outside for some fresh air because "its a very nice day today" Old school.......I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!

Then we went to the pharmacy, didn't have to show any sort of insurance card or anything, they didn't even keep the "prescription". The antibiotics cost 3.25 Euros so about five dollars! So far I'm loving my experience with the Italian health care system!