Departure: PDX to Palermo

April 20, 2016

This is a rare beginning of a tour for us - our flight leaves in early afternoon, so we have a leisurely start to the day. Usually we are up and out the door to catch a taxi at 4:30 or so.

Rachael is off on a last ride to Sauvie Island while I finalize packing, checking and rechecking the list to make sure we aren't forgetting anything critical. Not much to do now but sit around and relax for a couple hours, enjoy a cup of tea, listen to a few favorite jazz recordings for the last time for awhile (Chet Baker, because we just saw Ethan Hawke's great new biopic; Stacey Kent; Jacqui Naylor), and wait for Elizabeth to drive us out to the airport. Very nice.

It all fits! It always delights me to look at how little we will be getting by with for the next month - it satisfies the inner Thoreau in me.And yes Dawn, Rachael's GoPro is packed. And its mount. And its charger. And its storage unit. Thanks for the reminder!

It all fits into Elizabeth's vehicle! We won't need to strap Rachael to the roof after all.

Well here's a pleasant surprise - we ran into our friend Dania (a fellow international film buff) at the PDX terminal and are surprised to discover she'll be on our flight to Amsterdam!

The first leg of our flight is a nonstop to Amsterdam, over the polar route. I've got a window seat on the right aisle, and for the next several hours enjoy one of the most scenic flights I can recall. After a spectacular fly-by across the north face of Mount Hood, we bend north and follow the east face of the Cascades. I'm sure the left aisle has some amazing views of all the Washington volcanos, but I enjoy the Columbia Basin, Hanford Reach, and the arid lowlands of eastern Washingon. Further north though the mountain views of southern British Columbia are great, and I'm sure I can pick out the Canadian Rockies to the east. The skies are clear and it remains light for well into the evening as we move past BC into the Northwest Territories, when the lights finally went out.

Rachael missed it all, partly because she wasn't by the window but mostly because she was locked into a film triple header. She missed part of the film series as well - I'm pretty sure she had her eyes covered for a fair chunk of The Revenant.

I've taken many photos of Mount Hood, but never from this perspective. I wasn't sure I recognized it at first.

This Air Canada jet zipped by below us so fast that I almost didn't get the camera focused in time.

Over the mountainous interior of British Columbia

After landing in Amsterdam, we had an uncomfortably brief layover before our next flight, to Rome. And finally, two hours after that we hopped up again, landing in Palermo about 4:30. I have very little to report from either of these flights, because I mostly slept through them.

I can report on the Palermo terminal though - it has the oddest (i.e., dumbest) baggage claim arrangement I've ever seen. All of the passengers waited for quite as while for the carousel to start up and for any luggage to come out; and when it did, it would come in small batches and then stop again. Finally, after 20 minutes it just stopped completely, with half of the passengers still there, looking increasingly puzzled and anxious. Eventually someone noticed a second active carousel in a different room completely. Palermo for some reason sorts luggage into two groups, one for those whose flight itinerary originated in the European Union, and one in a did decent hall for everyone else. Quite odd.

Palermo. Wow!

The airport is quite some ways to the west of town. We caught a taxi, and sat in the back seat enthralled by the spectacular landscape and the completely unnerving traffic. We'll see much more of these beautiful hills and cliffs rising up in all directions in the coming days, but for tonight the big story is the traffic situation. We spent about a half hour gradually working our way through arterials and alleys, but almost everywhere the basic situation was the same - dense, unbroken, slow moving, semi chaotic traffic. Three or four lanes of traffic squeezing through two lanes of pavement. Death defying motor scooters doing a serpentine, threading the needle between the car lanes and weaving through jams. Infrequently a courageous bicyclist in the mix, almost invariably without a helmet.

When we finally arrived at the tiny alley of our hotel, the driver let us off two blocks away because it was the wrong way up the one way street. Which was fine, except the handle had gotten snapped off my bicycle suitcase somewhere during today's flight, so I couldn't wheel it up the street. Fortunately it has a side grip, but it was a long way to carry a fifty pound suitcase in one hand and my panniers in the other.

When we arrived at Hamony B&B, we received as welcoming a greeting as any I recall receiving anywhere. The owner, Giuseppe, is an amazing man - he obviously loves what he's doing, is proud of this magnificent old fifteenth century palace he has converted to a hotel, and loves his clients. He wouldn't check us in right away, because he wanted to usher us down to his lounge where his lovely daughter Frederica served us up with complementary beverages - and if this won't be enough, our room also has a complementary minibar. He left us there to chat with another couple staying there, from Arkansas, and listen to them talk about what an amazing time they've had on their stay here.

Finally, he escorts us up to our room, which is a stunner - it's a decent sized apartment really, with a balcony overlooking the beautiful alley and street life. Come back tomorrow and I'll throw in a photo or two of the room, from when the light is better.

At Harmony B&B: the street view from one of our balconies. The one in the picture is our second balcony, opening out from our palatial bath.

After showering and settling in, we are happy to find that we both are hungry and have enough energy to walk around a bit. Stepping out into the now quiet streets feels a bit like coming home for us. We've spent a lot of cumulative spring and autumn over the years in Southern Europe, and we feel immediately at home wandering these tiled streets, enjoying the warm, shirt sleeve evening air, and taking delight in the sounds of the swifts sweeping though the sky above us.

We're looking for the nearest bank, because we're euroless - we failed to find an ATM at any of the airport terminals, and fortunately have just enough left over from last spring to cover our taxi fare. In spite of directions we fail at that, but succeed at finding a great looking eatery on the way, and then succeed on refunding it after giving up on our cash quest. It's still pretty early in the evening, so it's not surprising that we're almost the only guests when we enter. It's a wonderful, atmospheric place, another old palace by the looks of it. And the food is amazing - a starter of eggplant, melted cheese and tomato sauce; a bucatini and anchovy pasta for myself, and a rigatoni and flat bean dish for Rachael.

Off in search of our first Sicilian meal.

This is encouraging. From what we've seen so far it's hard to imagine much cycling taking place in Palermo, but maybe conditions get better when you leave the city center.

By the time we step out of the now full restaurant, the streets are dark. The walk back to the room alternates between walks down now-silent alleys and down lively others where the bar scene completely engulfs the street, with drinkers sitting on the curbs or milling around, with their dogs milling around with them.

We get lost a bit, which is great because it takes us past the plaza before beautiful Saint Francis Church, and past another completely wonderful-looking restaurant that I'm sure we will return to tomorrow if we can find it. And it causes us up to backtrack, retrace our steps, and look up to see a completely full moon rising above the alley. With the help of our GPS we find our hotel again - it was only a block or two away, down a different alley - and are greeted back by Giuseppi who is just closing the place up for the evening.

Palermo. Wow!

The interior of Osteria Ballaro. So far at least, every place we've stepped inside of looks like a magnificent old palace or mansion.

At Osteria Ballaro. Rachael waits impatiently for me to hurry up and shoot, so we can dive in to our first Sicilian meal. If this is any indication, we have an amazing dining month in our future.

Working our way back to our hotel after our wonderful meal. These side streets have a magical atmosphere after hours - beautifully moody tiled lanes lined with decaying centuries old mansions, with fabulous surprises around each corner. The whole neighborhood surrounding our hotel feels like a living museum.

The facade of Saint Francis of Assisi Church.

On the small plaza in front of Saint Francis church is the mural of the Antica Focacciaria , serving popular Sicilian cooking since 1834. The restaurant itself is just to the left, and looks totally amazing. We'll be here tomorrow night.

Elsewhere, these narrow old alleys are not as quiet. It was hard for us to work our way through this bar scene, but not so difficult as for the car that came through just before us, inching his way through the crowd, a pair of dogs leisurely pacing across the street in front of his bumper.

A full moon radiates down on the old streets of Palermo's historic district. What better omen to begin a tour with than this?

Returning to our room for the night, Harmony B&B. It is a good thing we planned ahead and took our GPS with us to dinner, and had marked our hotel on it before setting out. We could have been wandering a long time otherwise.

Rachael with Giuseppe, the amazingly warm and gracious host of Harmony B&B. What a splendid place to stay this is - it's hard to imagine what could improve it.

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