Sicilian lover
Days 13, 14, 15: Palermo
(For some reason this is all bolded and I can't undo it)
It's been hard trying to gather my thoughts and write about Palermo, because to write you need to detach a little and the city is so immersive. I love southern Italy and the second I arrived here I loved it even more than I ever thought I would. (Bye, y'all!)
Palermo is a loud, noisy city. Every morning you wake up to the sound of huge church bells, or kids playing and shouting outside, or the huge sea birds crowing, or all of them at once. In the wide streets with people going from one shop to another or looking at sights or chatting you hear laughter, cars honking at each other or at women or just for the fun of it I assume, the neighs from the horse carriages running by. In the smaller streets and alleyways full of street vendors cars, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians all in the same single lane attempt to move to their own directions resulting in a mix of screams, honks and curses and of course the wild gesturing of hands. Stray dogs stroll around and occassionally bark at something, oil is being fried somewhere, someone is playing music on their balcony. The marketplaces are so full of people in the morning you can barely move, vendors shout as loud as they can over each other to advertise their goods - fresh vegetables or spices or meat hanging from hooks or raw fish that fills the area with a salty ocean smell - and all of the sounds stir into an orchestra of white noise that's still so loud and blends perfectly into the visuals of bright colours and sunshine and lights and people, and the smells of saffron and fried rice balls and I am so overwhelmed by the beauty and charm and pure magic of the city it's very hard to focus on writing. Or anything else, and it's been so good to reverse the Sardinian meditative haze into giving up the internal in favour of the external and feeling all your senses, the sounds and the smells and the tastes, and the all-encompassinäg humid heat and the pain in your knees for walking for another six hours and how coarse yet soft the stray puppy's fur is. If Palermo was a colour,it would be them all.
The sound of frying the traditional arancine rice balls, golden like the sun, the rice and oil and ragù melting in your mouth.
(For some reason this is all bolded and I can't undo it)
It's been hard trying to gather my thoughts and write about Palermo, because to write you need to detach a little and the city is so immersive. I love southern Italy and the second I arrived here I loved it even more than I ever thought I would. (Bye, y'all!)
Palermo is a loud, noisy city. Every morning you wake up to the sound of huge church bells, or kids playing and shouting outside, or the huge sea birds crowing, or all of them at once. In the wide streets with people going from one shop to another or looking at sights or chatting you hear laughter, cars honking at each other or at women or just for the fun of it I assume, the neighs from the horse carriages running by. In the smaller streets and alleyways full of street vendors cars, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians all in the same single lane attempt to move to their own directions resulting in a mix of screams, honks and curses and of course the wild gesturing of hands. Stray dogs stroll around and occassionally bark at something, oil is being fried somewhere, someone is playing music on their balcony. The marketplaces are so full of people in the morning you can barely move, vendors shout as loud as they can over each other to advertise their goods - fresh vegetables or spices or meat hanging from hooks or raw fish that fills the area with a salty ocean smell - and all of the sounds stir into an orchestra of white noise that's still so loud and blends perfectly into the visuals of bright colours and sunshine and lights and people, and the smells of saffron and fried rice balls and I am so overwhelmed by the beauty and charm and pure magic of the city it's very hard to focus on writing. Or anything else, and it's been so good to reverse the Sardinian meditative haze into giving up the internal in favour of the external and feeling all your senses, the sounds and the smells and the tastes, and the all-encompassinäg humid heat and the pain in your knees for walking for another six hours and how coarse yet soft the stray puppy's fur is. If Palermo was a colour,it would be them all.
The sound of frying the traditional arancine rice balls, golden like the sun, the rice and oil and ragù melting in your mouth.
