Fern e Mike a Palermo –Giorno 4 Palermo to Enrice.. September 4, 2013

Buonserra — It’s close to 11 pm our time.. I think about 2 pm in California on Wednesday.

I’m writing from Erice — a wonderful town about 2,500 ft above sea level, with the fog rolling in and temperature about 60 degrees. It’s totally eerie at this moment as you cannot see very far beyond yourself. A far cry from the heat and humidity of Palermo and what we will probably find in Rome.. So I am in heaven (I hate hot weather.. thus I did miserably in Phoenix).

Started our day at about 9 am with breakfast at the Excelsior Hotel and then packed an overnight bag to head to Erice in the northwest corner of Sicily.  Since it is pretty cheap to stay in Erice, we opted to leave our room in tact at the Excelsior Hotel — which was a brilliant move… no fuss, no muss.. no packing and unpacking.

We took a taxi to the train station to get the rental car (Europcar) which I had reserved on line the night before. As we entered the cab we learned that the Europcar is not at the Centrale (the main station) but at a smaller station, which caused a lot of confusion with the driver.. but we got there and found the rental office. The sole guy at the desk was a total character. Talked the entire time — nonstop — in Italian; read every document out loud in Italian; talked between documents.. and then tried to explain to us that somehow we had multiple reservations and this was confusing… In the middle of it all, another customer who we realized was waiting for a larger car than what was ordered for him was joined by his wife and baby who were waiting outside… and the Europcar guy decided he had to see the cute baby… the little bambini… so he dropped our car rental paperwork to go outside (leave the office totally unstaffed) to goo goo with the baby… Then he returned — talking again nonstop — something about the cute baby, I think.. and then finished up with our car rental.

So, off we went — sort of — in our little Fiat Panda. Then we needed to find our way from the station to the highway; no easy task. But eventually (only one or two wrong turns) we were on our way.. on the AutoStrada initially where our little Fiat was going about 70 mph and being passed by low level Fords going about 85 mph and the occasional fancy car going close to 100. We eventually got off the Auto Strada onto a smaller road to make our way to Erice… which involved about 70 hairpin turns.. on a road that couldn’t accommodate an oncoming car without a lot of maneuvering. Before nausea set in we were in Erice at the top of the hill.. a town with roots dating back to Hellenic times (several hundred years BC)..

We had made a last minute reservation at the Moderno Hotel online (which turns out to be not-so-moderno!)… We drove into town.. rather precipitously maneuvering impossible turns and right angle turns into streets barely wide enough for a little mini.. We kept following the signs for the Moderno… The entire town is stone… and quite fantastic… Finally we came to what we thought was the last street and last turn… only to find ourselves in a total traffic nightmare.  The road we were on was about 7 ft wide.. and just a few yards into the street sat a police car “parked” against the stone wall (building). We carefully negotiated around that car since we didn’t want to hit a police car.. and then when we thought we were in the clear… a large 5’wide oil truck was backing out of the street and we needed to back up in order to let him out of the street. By then several female cops arrived, along with half the town.. Everyone was into the action. I got out of the car to help guide Mike, while one cop scolded the truck driver… We had to back out into another street and then once the truck got out we were directed back onto the narrow street.

We reached the hotel; I took our bags and went to the hotel and then they explained that we needed to drive down another street and out an archway to a parking area where we would go into a police office to get a parking permit. Mike did that part while I checked into the “not-so-Moderno-Hotel”… When Mike caught up with me he said the Police were at lunch (everyone takes a lunch break from about 1:30 until 4).. so we would have to return to the police office to get the permit later.

We ate at the hotel and then split up to meander the town…. More on that tomorrow.. but just let me say that the plan of the town is an equilateral triangle; there are more than 60 churches in this hamlet of 25,000 people + several monasteries and convents (which I learned are not the same thing)… and there are streets/roads that are so narrow you can only walk single file (and not be too fat).

Post walk, I did some work needed by my office and then we headed to dinner at a very sweet place (a former convent).. called La Pentolaccia. Great food and very nice atmosphere.. and no Americans; mostly all Italians. A five-minute walk uphill from our hotel on those stone streets. Funny thing, we had a map but it was too dark to read.. so the trusty iPhone maps got us there door to door! Amazing!

By the time we left, the temperature had really dropped and the fog rolled in (a la Berkeley).. dropping all the way to the ground.

All my best

Fern

PS  Last night in Palermo, given that it was Rosh Hashanah.. we checked out the Jewish situation and learned that there are less than 50 Jews living in the city  — not enough to be considered a community and definitely no synagogue. So, I’ll have a little bread with honey (which they serve easily) by myself. Happy New Year to all.