Sicily!

We are now in Sicily, the small 'football' at the end of Italy, and have just begun our Terre de Sicilia tour. We spent our first day around Palermo, the capital city.

Cattedrale di Monreale - a fantastic church with a fusion of architectural styles: Norman, Arab, Byzantine and Classical. Sicily has been invaded and occupied many, many times, and this is evident everywhere you look. Here there are beautiful Christian mosaics and geometric Arab decoration.

Catacombe dei Capuccini - a bit grisly, this is a collection of mummified corpses of famous or rich Palermites from the last 400 years (including children).

Palazzo dei Normann - the Norman palace, now used for Sicilian parliament. A bit dull actually...

Teatro Massimo - a 19th Century opera house. The final bloodthirsty sequence of Godfather Part III was filmed here. Of course there is now a photo of me on the same steps :)

Santuario di Santa Rosalia - an old woman lived in a cave. Then she died. Then a shephard slept in the cave and dreamed of the old woman. Since then all sorts of miracles have been ascribed to her and she has been sanctified! The cave has now had a church built over it, and you can buy "holy water" that has condensed on the walls of the cave. The picture is not very good, but it shows the complex mechanisms that are attached to cave walls to catch the condensation and funnel it to a pool. I suspect it's mostly moisture from the people breathing in the cave. Yuck!

Mondello - beach resort. Had a nice gelato each.