Palermo, Sicily: What follows are my impressions of Palermo and environs. The terrain hereabouts resembles nothing so much as the Southern California coastline. The buildings are mostly stucco or stone if very old, the colors are tans and ivories, and the roofs tend to be tile.
Sicily has a reputation for being poor. Could be, but there are sure a lot of little cars for a truly poor place. It runs to market days, Palermo has one on Saturday morning - what today was - as we drove through it. Our driver said it moves from place to place on various days of the week.
We took a cab from Palermo to Termini Imaresi Alto, where the other DrC’s dad’s people came from. It is 20+ miles east of Palermo on the coast. We saw the building where one of her relatives lived, or if not the actual building, one that replaced the one on that same spot.
The drive there was interesting, the driver fancied himself a fast driver and was in fact skilled. I rode in front beside him and it was like being Nuvolari’s navigator on the Mille Millia. Quite a thrill ride, considering our ‘race car’ was a small van-turned-taxi.
The weather was cool but I was comfortable in shirt sleeves. Oddly, the Sicilians were all wearing ski parkas as though it were cold. I suppose Dec. is maybe as cold as it gets here, and that was decidedly “not very.”
An odd thing was the number of plumes of smoke I saw at various locations. I saw no fire trucks so I presume all were intentional and more or less under control. The result was a good amount of smoke in the air which was visible, if not olfactorally perceptible. Island people tend to ignore air pollution as sea breezes blow smoke away.
