When the cruise ship docked today at 8 am, everyone in my cabin was still sleeping. In fact, we didn't even get off the ship until about 10 because we enjoy sleeping and taking our time to eat and get ready for the day. When we did get off the boat, we were once again assaulted by taxi drivers. However unlike the drivers in Naples, these were a little but less sketchy in how they tried to get people to get rides from them. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't follow us though. In fact, as we were leaving the port area there was a girl who followed us trying to give us a ride up to the castle on the hill. When we told her that we already had plans to walk around the city and see what we could see. Of course, then she proceeded to tell us that we wouldn't see anything and she would take us to the best places. We left after that to try and find some nice places.
Look at the view from the Harbor!
The first place on our list was anywhere with free wifi availability so we stopped at a coffee place and found a nice church on Google that we thought we would like. We followed the directions Google maps gave us and walked along a large road for a while. On the way, we passed a lot if beautiful structures like the theater and the various picturesque parks with random roman carvings. That's not even counting the beautiful Italian architecture that was all over the place. At one point, we turned the corner and saw these two ancient roman arches that we had to go through to get to the church. Down that street on either side were food vendors like an old fashioned food bazaar. On every side were people selling fruits, alcohol, fish, vegetables, and meats. It was pretty cool to be completely immersed in the Sicilian culture like that. Finally we turned a corner and stumbled upon the church. It was HUGE! We walked inside and marveled at the intricate statues of various saints and the decorations inlaid into the walks. Our wonder increased when we saw that each design was individually made in a mosaic style. Just as we were about to leave the church, we saw our two table mates, but didn't say hello because they were all the way across the church and we just wanted to leave.
Pretty cool tree just sort of hanging out here
Can you see the Roman column/gate? The market was between that
This church was absolutely huge!!
Look at this artwork on the ceiling!
Next on the list was to find a good pizza place, preferably with a good Italian/Sicilian wine. On our search, we sort of wandered into a huge crowd that was carrying a lot of banners and blowing a lot if whistles. I think it was a protest. Of course, being in the middle of a Sicilian protest wasn't what we wanted at all, so we went down a neat side road until we had passed the crowd. On the way, we stumbled onto the Sicilian government house and had a look inside, which was pretty cool. The indoor decorations were stunning, and yes I say that a lot, but all these sights are so wonderful in so many different ways! Soon we left to continue our search for pizza, and found a place to eat not long after that and every one ordered something different, along with a glass of some kind of red wine. I don't know exactly what it was, but it was good. I also got a calzone and was really satisfied, but it was almost too big an I ended up not finishing all of it. After lunch, Austin and Aaron wet back to the ship while Kelsey and I meandered over to the palace. Unfortunately, parliament was being held in the palace so we couldn't see the royal suite, but the chapel and the ruins were still open.
In the Sicilian voting place where officials gather to talk about new laws.
This was just one of the rooms, there were 4 more with various themes for each of them
The various flags were pretty cool to see.
The view of the city from the second story window.
As soon as we walked into the chapel, we were flabbergasted by the detail and gold leaf on the mosaic pictures lining every relatively flat surface...an a few that weren't. It was quite the sight to see. Under the lowest floor, sort of hidden behind the gift shop, were the original roman ruins that the modern palace was built on top of. We were able to walk around in them and see arches and tunnels running underneath the modern structure. After that was done, both of us were ready to head back to the boat, but we had to walk fast because we were running a little short on time and it was drizzling a little bit. While we were walking back, we were constantly stopped by street sellers that had covered up their usual wares and were now trying to sell umbrellas. It's actually a good strategy, but to becomes a little annoying when you need to walk just over a mile and everyone's trying to sell you an umbrella. We got back on the boat and took a nap before heading to dinner. After a nice dinner with our table mates, we decided it was probably better to get an excursion in tunis the next day, so we all went to the excursion desk and booked a tour to Sidi Bou Said (pronounced "city boo sighed") and Carthage for the next day.
Just look at this! How would anyone not be in awe walking into here with this being their first sight?
All this is in a mosaic style
Look how tiny each piece is! It must have taken years to finish the entire chapel
The original ruins beneath the palace
The rest of the night passed in pleasant company with food from room service while watching the wonderful movie Frozen. After that movie ended, we went to sleep because we had to wake up early to meet with the tour group the next day.
Erin Z
Erin Z
No comments:
Post a Comment