We started out the day with another great breakfast at Hotel Joli
before we headed out for a busy day of exploring Palermo. Our first stop was the Teatro Massimo that we had seen on the bus ride to Monreale. The building looked to me like a really nice public library, but not in a bad way... I guess the grand staircase, the statues of lions, and the cylindrical main space just put that image in my mind. The building wasn't yet, so we sat in the piazza in front of the building and sketched a section of the piazza and part of the opera house. After seeing so many white and grey marble buildings in Rome, it was nice to see a building with such vivid colors and big, beautiful windows.
An ornate tabacchi in the square in front of Teatro Massimo... very nice.
One of two lion statues at the entrance to the theater.
A fancy street lamp, palm trees, and a beautiful blue sky over Palermo.
The Four Fountains intersection.
After 45 minutes or so, we headed on down the street to an intersection with a fountain and similar building facade on each of the four corners... this seemed to be the epicenter of our activities in Palermo: turning right would take you to the cathedral (and the good restaurant we eventually found), turning left would take you to the market, turning back would take you to the opera house and the hotel. Just beyond the intersection was a nice area with statues and fountains that I took a bunch of pictures of, here are a couple of them:
Once again, the sun was obscenely bright and turned the falling water into what looked like liquid light... it was awesome to see.
A line of statues, leading your eye up to the dome.
After playing Frogger with the passing cars in order to take see all four fountains, we headed
down the road to the Cathedral of Palermo. For me, the building turned out to be one of the most interesting ones that we saw on the trip. Because of its ideal location in the middle of the Mediterranean, Sicily has been conquered throughout history by numerous groups, all of which have left their mark on the area. The cathedral is a prime example of this, as you can see characteristics of many of these groups incorporated into the exterior of a single building. This makes for some interesting detail shots and sketches. Here our task was to choose an interesting piece of the facade and piazza landscaping to analyze.
A statue that looks like it means business.
Some Gothic buttressing, with some help from the building across the street.
The cathedral dome.
The section to the right with the clocktower is the area I analyzed for my sketchbook.
Another shot of my section.
While we were at the cathedral, a large flock of people paraded down the street with signs and megaphones, then turned into our piazza and entered the church. I'm not sure what they were protesting (our war on terror, maybe?) but fortunately, we didn't need to go inside the cathedral today.
It was mid-afternoon when we finished at the cathedral, and the group took a winding walk through Palermo, coming across various piazzas, churches, and interesting alleyways... half the time I had no idea where I was or what I was looking at, but everything, in its own way, was beautiful and interesting.
A mosque (?) we passed by on our walk.
A shot of the mosque's (church's?) tower.
The back of a car outside the church... the common theme in all of these posts seems to be me being distracted by shiny things.
A drainspout in the courtyard of an art museum.
An alleyway balcony close to a park.
One of the the giant trees, through a fence oustide the park.
The last stop on our walk was Giardini Garibaldi, with absolutely enormous trees like I had never seen before. Apparently this park contained the biggest trees in Italy, and I'd believe it... they weren't particularly tall and didn't have massive trunks like redwoods, but the branches and root systems on the trees were unbelievable! You could find ways to go inside the tree, and they were really fun to climb on. this was the central tree that we took our group shot in front of.
The vines on the trees would fall from the branches and grow straight down into the ground... it was pretty amazing, and a little bit strange.
This one's for you, Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Jon... a hibiscus!
After the gardens, we went our separate ways. I went back to the hotel for a while to unload pictures onto my computer, work on my sketchbook, and relax a bit before dinner. When we did eventually go (later on, so as to avoid the debacle of the night before), we found a great place near the four fountains intersection that was family-owned and amazingly good. While we were waiting for food, we got to watch some Italy's Funniest Home Videos... pretty much like ours, it isn't exactly great dinner TV but it was hysterical. Awesome food, cool people, great conversations... all in all a pretty great night. That pretty much wrapped up the day.
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