Even more on Sicily... :-P

Monday, October 29, 2007

Hello again!

As you can see I don’t post blogs over the weekend… so I have to refresh my memory now…

We stayed in Sicily for two months, the first two weeks of that were spent in Palermo. Palermo’s the main city, like Paris is for France. The three weeks there we saw some absolutely amazing things! Like I said before the statues there were absolutely gorgeous, gargoyles on the buildings, and statues that the city has been built around, we were just wandering around and somehow managed to bump into Piazza Pretoria… a very… nude fountain :-P… it was finished being built in 1581 and since the Public square has still been called the Palermitani Public square of the Shame because of how… nude it is :-P.

Moving on… my dad’s family took us to lots of places around Palermo. One for instance was Saint Rosalia; I know that I’ve said before. Well if you ever go, I’m warning you now that it is a very, long, steep drive up the mountain and lemon scented air fresheners do not help at all! It made my stomach turn and gave me a headache, but once we reached the very, tippy top and breathed in the wonderfully fresh air, I was fine again :)!

We parked then had to climb quite a few steps until we finally made it. It was very pretty actually, with the mountain, looking as if it was leaning on the cathedral… really the cathedral had been built into the mountain.

Here’s a little bit of history for you now, come on it won’t kill you to read it :-P! Saint Rosalia was born in 1130 to a Norman noble family that were descendents of Charlemagne. Once she grew up she decided to go live as a “hermit” in the mountains. In 1166 she died, but nobody knew of it. Then in 1624 a plague took over Palermo, apparently Saint Rosalia “appeared” to a sick woman first. And then a hunter. She told the hunter to climb the mountain and described the cave in which he would find her remains in, so of course he did, finding the bones as she described. He brought them back down to Palermo and a cathedral was built in that cave.

Inside was gorgeous! If you read the post below you’ll see that I’ve already told you about the open area where the rain water came in, flowed down the pipes that were along the walls and then finished at the Holy water. As you walked past that bit, you came into the cathedral with the chairs and the altar but to the left was a large glass, tank sort of this with a marble and gold statue of Saint Rosalia and an angel inside, on top of that there was a box with everyone’s wishes that had visited it.

As you walk through the entrance there’s an absolute monster of an anchor just sitting there, quite confusing, eh? This isn’t a harbour… we’re on the top of a mountain :S… I was thinking.

Well the story goes that as a boat was sinking the people on it prayed to Saint Rosalia and voila ( <<< hey look at that! I’m really getting French here!!!) the boat stopped sinking. So the people that were on the boat carried the anchor all the way up the mountain!!! There’s a shrine with pictures and thank you messages with similar stories, for instance there’s a torn and scratched up motorbike helmet, no need in explaining this guy’s story :-P.

I was just trying to think of things to type and (:-O! I can’t believe that I haven’t told you about this thing yet!!! GELATO!!! I LOVE it SO much! It is Sicilian ice-cream (gelato is basically just the word ice-cream… except in Italian)…

My mouth’s watering just thinking of it! If you go to Sicily, you will come accustomed to seeing gelaterias on practically every street. A gelateria is an ice-cream parlour. You go in and there’s a counter filled with TONNES of different types of ice-cream. It is the most complex procedure EVER! Once you choose what you want then it’s simple enough :-P.

I was addicted to it. My favourite ever was Banane e frutti di bosco (I can’t believe I still remembered that… 5 months is a very long time to remember the name of an Italian ice-cream!), Banana and fruits of the forest. Oooh! *Drools* it was the nicest… even better than the cheesecake at Stansted airport :-P!

The nicest ice-cream that I’ve ever had in Ireland was Ben and Jerry’s Archaeological Dig from a tub or something like that. It was chocolate with chocolate shaped dinosaurs :-P! Mmmm yummy! The ice-cream from the ice-cream vans always gave me coughing attacks…

Well I think that’s enough about ice-cream now… next post I’ll tell you about more Sicilian adventures… that’s where the fun really begins :-P!

Hope to hear from you all soon.

- Bianca