Winter home

Well, here we are in our winter home – by the skin of our teeth as it happened.  We’d been told by a number of other cruisers we met in the summer that the recently built marina here was a good over-wintering spot and that there was loads of space.  Consequently we didn’t actually enquire about a berth until late September, to be told by the office “sorry, we have no space”.  Having friends who were already here we got them to make enquiries and then put a bit of a spurt on and arrived ourselves on Sunday 12^th October.  We kept our heads down on Sunday night and decided to check into the marina office on Monday morning.  The place is pretty full and that night we got depressed by stories of other cruisers who were already here and having to hassle for a winter berth and pay more than the marina’s published prices.  Next day we went to the office prepared for a non-committal answer “we are very full ... maybe there will be a cancellation ... perhaps in a few days” ... etc, etc.  Instead we were treated as if we had always been expected and were booked straight into a berth for the next six months with a 10% discount on the published rates.  So we have power, water and smart new toilet and shower blocks with washing machines for the princely sum of £30 per week.

Porto di Roma is actually a massive new marina development with berths for around 800 yachts sandwiched between the mouth of the River Tiber and the outskirts of Ostia, Rome’s seaside suburb about fifteen miles from the City centre.  The marina is about a mile long with a pedestrian walkway next to the yacht berths which is the width and length of a small aircraft runway.  This is quite appropriate as Rome’s main airport is only about three miles away and occasionally the flight path is routed right overhead, so the place reverberates to jumbo jets only a couple of hundred feet above us as they scream skywards.  On the other side of the walkway is a more less continuous strip of low rise buildings containing car parks, toilet and shower blocks every couple of hundred metres and fronted by shop units and cafes.  We arrived on a hot and sunny Sunday afternoon and were amazed at the hustle and bustle.  The walkway was almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Romans strolling up and down and mooching in the shops on their Sunday passagiata.  It was like nowhere else we have been this season, new concrete buildings, designer shops, city folk in their suits and designer casuals and roller bladers and kids on bikes and scooters weaving their way in and out of the throng.  Subsequently, we found that this was only at weekends, during the week the place is virtually empty and some of the shops don’t even bother to open.

The surrounding area is interesting if you like flat semi-urban wasteland.  Up by the mouth of the Tiber and along its banks is a shantytown with poverty like nowhere else we’ve yet seen in Italy.  At the rivers edge is a row of shacks which have large umbrella-like fishing nets outside.  These are attached to small cranes which raise and lower the nets into the grey waters of the Tiber.  The roads in the shanty are all unmade and the place is as quiet as the grave, apart from the many unkempt and surly looking mongrels that loiter suspiciously.  On the Ostia side of the marina are rows of 1960s and 70s apartment blocks in varying stages of decay which have the reek of local government corruption.  There is graffiti and waste everywhere and the social projects that go with depressed urban communities – a theatre here and a youth centre there.  It’s like a bit of Hackney has decided to go for a Mediterranean beach holiday.  Further towards its centre Ostia morphs into a more respectable suburb, more like Sidcup-on-sea.  A few days ago we made our first trip into Rome itself.  This takes about an hour and costs only about £1 return.  The trip is very like that into central London from one of the outer suburbs, finishing with an underground ride.  En route we had parties of school kids, bored straphanging commuters, buskers and drunks stinking of booze.  Yup, we really feel at home here. 

Like all big cities Rome is on a first visit quite bewildering.  We wandered around fairly aimlessly, suddenly coming across famous monuments like Trajan’s Column and the Spanish steps.  My over-riding first impression was of the sheer age of the City and its historical continuity all the way back to the Roman Republic.  Unlike London, where the ancient City is buried under layers of successive development and only tiny fragments of the Roman City are visible, in Rome ancient buildings survive cheek by jowl with the medieval, renaissance, counter-reformation and modern cities.  Round one corner we found the remains of the Emperor Augustus’ mausoleum, a huge brick ruin that looks more like a bombed out bunker than a Roman relic.  In Rome two thousand years no longer seems such a long time and the influence of Roman culture on modern society is much more palpable.  This brings me back to a feeling I’ve had often in Italy – that unlike Britain the Romans never left this country, they are not foreigners whose galleys disappeared over the horizon, they are still here and one can see it in the sharp eyed hook-nosed faces all around one in the cafes and on the underground.

The End of the Sailing Season

Next day, Sue’s hunting instinct overcame her finer feelings and she was back fishing, although I’m not entirely sorry to say without success.  It was another wonderfully mild and sunny day and with all our sails set we glided up to the fleet of Roman yachts sailing off Porto di Roma and the mouths of the Tiber and the Fiumicino canal.  It’s been such a great season that neither of us wanted it to end and we were tempted to just keep on going.  But we have things to do this winter and all good things must come to an end, so we headed on in to the marina.

This winter is going to be very different from the last.  Apart from the fact that we have all the facilities we need within a few hundred metres and the joy of slowly exploring Rome, there are at least thirty English-speaking cruising boats in here for the winter and a very active social life developing.  We have a morning VHF radio net mainly used for organising social activities.  Two American cruisers have negotiated a “happy hour” at the nearby Gran Cafe which offers us drinks at half price from five to eight pm.  Others are organising yoga, musical evenings, cooking lessons and bridge nights.  There may even be guided tours of the major Roman sites led by a local professor who one of the cruisers who was here last year got to know.

All in all we are well placed to carry out our most pressing winter project, provisionally entitled “SO WHAT EXACTLY THE **** DO WE  DO NOW?”  As I’m sure you all realise our progress on this issue so far has been about zero.  Our basic choices are fairly stark, carry on as we are for the next five or ten years and run out of money (tempting) or develop a lifestyle which is economically sustainable.  Anyway we’ve started to take the first steps, we’ve made a list (well that’s OK then!) and Sue is applying for Teaching English as a Foreign Language courses.  It’s been a great summer, but now reality (whatever that is) begins to bite.

Nettuno

Next day we headed for Nettuno harbour, next to Anzio back on the mainland, again in fine weather.  Since leaving Maiori Sue had been trailing a fishing line and experimenting with different methods and lures (imitation fish) and was showing a scary aptitude.  First she hooked a large Tuna, then we think a Dorado, but both these slipped off the hook as we tried to land them.  On the way to Nettuno she got another big brute which I reeled in and managed to flip into the cockpit.  There was this beautiful blue, grey and silver beast, about two feet long.  Sadly, Sue’s fishing expertise does not yet extend to delivering the coup de grace.  With the fish flapping wildly on the cockpit floor with me holding it down we tried pouring gin into its gills, which we had been told was a relatively humane method of killing.  Half a bottle later the poor thing was still very much alive so I started hitting it over the head with an adjustable wrench.  Ten minutes later the boat looked like a scene from Psycho, with blood everywhere and me hysterically screaming “die you bastard” while still hitting it with the wrench.  After about twenty minutes it was quiet, although still making the occasional accusatory twitch.  By this time Sue and I were grey, emotionally exhausted and feeling like the murderers that we were.  That night with the help of the marina officials in Nettuno we identified our prey as a Lampuga, a mullet-like fish good for eating, so we did the decent thing and gutted, scaled and pan fried it.  I have to say it made us feel more like real cruisers, catching, killing and eating our first fish.  

Ponza

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I find the weather in the Med bewilderingly changeable and when we left Ischia it was with a flat clam sea and bright sunshine. During the day the temperature climbed to 35c as we motored past the island of Ventotene and on to Ponza, the most populous of the Pontine Islands. We had expected Ponza harbour to be surrounded with lots of small marinas, but in another sign of the lateness of the season all the pontoons had been removed and stacked on the beach. Ponza is a spectacular island rising sheer out of the Tyrrhenian Sea in a symphony of cliffs, caves and bizarre rock formations. We anchored in the harbour with a couple of other cruising yachts, including one brave elderly Swiss couple who had a skinny dip before rowing ashore. That night I watched the Ponza car ferry arrive with increasing trepidation. From about a mile out I could hear the thrumming of its engines and see its navigation lights heading for us in a straight line. Within a hundred metres and looming increasingly large it still seemed to be going full ahead, before turning hard to starboard, dropping its anchors with a very loud clanging and backing onto the town quay whilst sounding its hooter to announce its arrival. It disgorged a motley cargo of passengers, lorries and beaten up Apes (the small three-wheeled vans that are Italy’s replacement for the donkey).

Ischia

Having said goodbye to Sue’s Mum and Dad at Naples Airport we stayed in Maiori for a couple more days before heading out on 7th October. We had stayed twelve days in the end and frankly we were pushing our luck in the little port, which is really suitable only for settled weather. It was a grey and threatening day when we left and we encountered increasingly lumpy seas as we passed by Capri and headed into the bay of Naples. We crossed the bay and called in at Casamicciola, a pleasant little port on the island of Ischia, where we spent three days waiting for a storm to blow out.

 We toured this green and almost tropical island on the crowded local buses and paid a visit to the charming villa and gardens created by Sir William Walton the composer and his wife Susana, who still lives there. The storm caused not a little excitement and marked the end of the season for many harbour and beachside cafes, which were pounded by the great white breakers which rolled in along the coast. The morning after the worst of it we saw a couple of bedraggled blokes salvaging the chest fridge and what other bits they could from the wreckage of “Gino’s Bar”, where the day before we’d seen holidaymakers relaxing and drinking. All this was no great tragedy I think, some beach cafe owners dismantle their shacks earlier in the season while others push their luck for a few extra euros until the first of the big autumn storms forces them to shut up shop.

Pompeii

Last time I wrote we were in the little port of Maiori on the Amalfi coast waiting for a visit from Sue’s Mum and Dad. On the Saturday they arrived we hired a small car and headed off up the steep hills of Amalfi to Naples airport. Cresting these hills we got our first quite staggering view of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples. The cone of Vesuvius itself is a National Park, but the plain that spreads below it contains a great urban sprawl interlaced with motorways. Vesuvius has the potential to blow its top big time and the effects on this vast metropolis don’t bear thinking about.

Maiori was a perfect spot for us to stay while Sue’s Mum and Dad came to visit and we managed to find them a hotel which overlooked the little port. It was a very sociable time with two other British boats in the harbour, “Chin Chin II” and “Gwen L” who we’d been cruising with on and off since Calabria. One evening we ended up taking a table for ten at one of the local restaurants. During their stay Sue’s Dad gave her a couple of fishing lessons, which she put to good use later.

While we had the car we drove over to Pompeii and spent a day there. For those who haven’t been it is one of those places that more than lives up to its reputation. The site is vast and the buildings complete enough to give one a very real idea of what a prosperous Roman town actually looked like, including the often sumptuous internal mosaics and wall paintings. While we were there a large military helicopter flew low over the site. A little later we found it had landed next to the Coliseum and was surrounded by ambulances and carabinieri. Some expensive suits were also hanging around sipping wine and talking on their mobile ‘phones. Then a forklift truck appeared and moved up to the helicopter before slowly and carefully removing a large and ornate chair from inside the helicopter. There was much debate between the suits as this was going on and the carabinieri told us to put our cameras away. Suddenly we made a link to a newspaper report we’d seen a couple of days previously – the Pope (“il Papa”) was due to pay a visit to Pompeii on 7th October and this was obviously a rehearsal.

We spent an enjoyable week exploring the Amalfi coast, including the beautiful hill town of Ravello, which is several hundred feet above Maiori and a discrete watering hole for the rich and famous. A car is not however, the best way to explore this area. The roads are narrow and very winding, the traffic is horrendous and there are few places to park.

Maiori

We’re now on the Amalfi coast south of Naples. Over the past year we’ve become connoisseurs of the Italian coastline and this is another fine stretch to add to our collection. The coast rises sheer out of the Gulf of Salerno up to, I guess, a couple of thousand feet and is dotted with castles, craggy inlets, seaside towns and hill villages. Everywhere the land is green and terraced with lemon groves and vineyards and right now it is suffused with a golden autumnal light. Maiori is a small, unpretentious seaside town about two miles east of Amalfi itself, with a tiny harbour at one end, tucked underneath a cliff which rises about two hundred feet and on which stands a neo gothic castle. The road to Amalfi climbs above us and loops round the cliff in a sharp hairpin bend, so we have a great view of the regular confrontations between buses, lorries and coaches as they negotiate the turn. It’s like watching a mating ritual between large and cumbersome beasts as they approach one another cautiously with a snort of air brakes and a blast or two on their hooters, then edge slowly past one another in jerky forward and reverse manoeuvres.

This is the most heavily touristed area we have travelled in our cruising this year, with many British, German and American holidaymakers as well as Italians. Because it’s late in the season the sunloungers, beach huts and cafes are slowly being dismantled and the youngsters and families have gone, to be replaced by elderly and middle-aged visitors. They crawl round the place in pairs like curious tortoises, their wrinkly necks protruding from Marks and Spencers autumn sale beach shirts and summer dresses. We were having lunch in a small restaurant a couple of days ago when a group of elderly Irish tourists descended, many wearing little badges to indicate they were on some kind of package pilgrimage. Even before they sat down they were haranguing the patient young waiter:

“I want fried fish, have you fried fish? ... and chips, I want chips.”
“I want pasta but I don’t want cheese in it ... you won’t put cheese in it will you now?”

Eventually the orders were taken and a tray of beers and wine emerged. One old girl picked up a litre carafe and raised it to her lips with a cry of “cheers”, then two of the more sophisticated in the party explained what the wine glasses were for. Plates of mixed fried fish were brought out and the old boys poked suspiciously with their forks at the squid tentacles nestled in among the fish. The waiter was recruited to take photos of the party, carefully lining up his shots and telling everyone to say “cheese” while simultaneously being badgered by the Irish on the next table “excuse me, excuse me, we want more chips”. They paid with a flurry of questions and euro notes before disappearing towards the seafront leaving not a morsel of food or drink on the deserted tables, like the aftermath of a plague of locusts.

The “marina” itself has only been open since August and has been little publicised – we heard about it from another cruising boat. The first yacht to visit in August was apparently greeted by the mayor, photographed for the local paper and given free moorings whenever they return. It’s an old fishing harbour with space for no more than fifty boats, which has been given the full marina treatment – new pontoons, power and water, loos, showers, a marina office and many little shop units all smelling of fresh plaster and newly grouted tiles. There’s even a little amphitheatre and a pond with lights and fountains, all totally uneconomic and I suspect part paid for by the EC and the local Council. When we arrived the place was empty but for a few small day boats and a coastguard cutter, the crew lounging around in their immaculate white uniforms, smoking and chatting with the marina staff. We agreed a price of €20 per night, which is maybe half or a third what one would pay elsewhere on this coast for similar facilities.

Word soon gets round in the cruising world and since we got here three days ago two more yachts have arrived, with I suspect a few more on the way. Sue’s Mum and Dad are arriving today for a week and we’ve managed to find them a hotel with a view of the harbour about five hundred metres away. It’s a tough old life being on the marina staff here. There must be about five Ormeggiatori (yacht helpers) all with new yellow “Porto di Maiori” T shirts, plus a woman who works mornings in the office. They can’t do enough for us and the other two yachts here, helping us on and off the boats with shopping, finding gas, and opening up the toilets and showers on demand, all of which must account for about five percent of their working day. The remainder comprises pottering around in the marina’s new inflatable dinghy doing a bit of fishing and swimming and sunbathing. When that all gets a bit too much they settle back in their deckchairs and ogle the women on the nearby beach with high-powered binoculars. Given the average age of the holidaymakers at this time of year I think at least one of the guys must be a varicose vein fetishist.

Maratea

After our stay in Vibo Valentia we headed north towards the Amalfi coast, stopping at a succession of sleepy little ports. It’s was a sociable time, travelling in concert with two other British yachts, “Gwen L” and “Chin Chin”. The high spot for me was Maratea, a collection of small hamlets strung out on the coast and hills of Basilicata. There is a tiny port with a handful of bars and restaurants and the main village up in the hills, all dominated by an enormous statue of Christ, arms outstretched, on the summit of a 2,000 foot high peak and visible for ten or more miles offshore. At night the statue is floodlit and seems to levitate above the little port. We spent a day trekking to the summit, stopping for a drink in the village, which is a laid back “away from it all” resort for the European and American middle classes.

 On our way back down from the statue we came across a cycle race in the village. Several hundred lycra clad cyclists shot through the place in a blur, cheered on by the locals. They were followed by several support vans covered in logos and then by some stragglers, also cheered on by the crowd. Finally an old local puttered up the street on a battered Vespa to be greeted by more cheers, before stopping at bar and modestly waving acknowledgements to his mock supporters.

A Storm off Tropea

Sailing up the Calabrian coast we were hit by our first really bad squall off the fashionable resort of Tropea.  One minute we were motor sailing in a moderate breeze and the next the wind was literally screaming through the rigging with rain stinging our faces.  Instinctively we got the sails down fast and started to motor further offshore.  It lasted about two hours during which we bucked up and down in a very short and uncomfortable sea, continually drenched with cold rainwater and occasionally lashed by warm seawater as the fifty-knot winds whipped the top off a wave and smacked it in our faces.  During the squall and its aftermath we were actually approached by two Italian Coastguard Search and Rescue boats to check that we were OK.

That day we stopped at Vibo Valentia where we chilled out for a few days and hired a car to explore the Calabrian hinterland.

Tooled up in Reggio

Having last been on the Italian mainland in Livorno in May we returned to it at Reggio di Calabria, just south of the Straits of Messina as we began our journey north to Rome. I was expecting to see a dirt poor dump full of tower blocks and rusting cars. In fact the city centre is bustling and sophisticated, with smart seafront cafes overlooking Sicily and the Straits and the continual stream of ferries and container ships plying to and from the Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas. However, in a back street cafe we did get a glimpse of a different Calabria. The place was full of young men with tattoos and at one table three were dressed in black with gold jewellery and shades. They had the uneasy and twitchy demeanour of serious drug users. At another table a smart casually dressed guy sat talking on his mobile phone, but appeared to be getting an unusual amount of “respect” from the waitress and the men in black. As we left the cafe Sue explained to me that the “respect” might have been something to do with the automatic pistol stuck in the back of his trousers which she had noticed as he reached into his car to grab something.

Hell on Earth

Catania, our furthest point south by boat this season, was weird. It’s the largest conurbation in Sicily and having parked La Fulica in the commercial harbour we took a walk through the dockyard to the centre of town. Maybe I’d had too much sun or alcohol or both, but this fantasy began to grow in my mind that Catania was like the Devil’s attempt to create a “normal” city in hell to make new arrivals feel more at home. At one level it feels like a normal town, but to me it had an uneasy dystopic edge. For one thing the town is predominantly black, built from lava and the streets are covered in what looks like coal dust. For another, there is a subtle but pervasive smell of sulphur emanating from Mount Etna on the northwestern edge of town. It was also hot, aggressive and noisy and on our way back to the boat I was intimidated by large dogs which roamed the dockyards. That night I slept in the cockpit to give Sue and Rosemary some respite from my snoring and was kept awake by fireworks going off into the small hours from several of the city suburbs and a thunder storm rolling over Etna. At one point I awoke to loud booms and a particularly strong smell of sulphur and began to think, “my God, maybe Etna’s blowing”. As well as strong images Catania left us with another little legacy, serious stomach upsets, from which Sue has only just recovered, courtesy of a cheap and cheerful little restaurant next to the fish market.

Having seen Rosemary onto the bus to Palermo at five o’clock in the morning we were met by Bernie and Anne in the afternoon and whisked in their air-conditioned hire car to their air-conditioned hotel. I hesitate to say this, but cruising can be emotionally and physically tiring (loud cries of “try working for a living you smug bastard”) and by the time we got to Catania we were, for a while at least, pretty well cruised out. As a result, four days of ensuite bathrooms, satellite TV and poolside cocktails was heaven. After a taxing day by the pool we would drive into the centre of Siracusa and wander around the Old Town before having a leisurely supper in the piazza under the town cathedral. All good things must come to an end and with Bernie and Anne’s departure back to the UK autumn set in - on 3rd September at 9.00am to be precise. We were in Riposto at the time, a fishing harbour at the very foot of Etna which now has a very smart new marina. Having gone to bed on a balmy and starlit summer evening we awoke to grey cloud and pissing rain and the weather has been stormy and changeable ever since.

The Straits of Messina and Taormina

Sue and Rosemary both found the Straits of Messina a bit of a let down, I think, although I was fascinated. At their narrowest the straits are maybe only half a mile wide and there are strong currents caused by differences in the times of high and low water in the Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas. The two seas also have different salinity levels which creates small whirlpools and eddies. I think Sue was hoping that we’d skirt the edge of Charybdis, the legendary whirlpool of “the Odyssey” and see Poseidon looking up and beckoning us down the plughole. We did hit a small whirlpool, but it was a flat calm and windless day and all that happened was the autohelm struggled a bit to keep us on a strait course. A greater hazard are the ferries that ply in a constant stream to and from Messina to Villa San Giovanni on the mainland. While in the Straits we were lucky to see three or four of the swordfish boats that hunt there on calm days. They are quite small boats but with a walkway extending from their bow by as much as fifty feet and are steered by the Captain sat atop a twenty or thirty foot tower. The boats move in predatory circles around the Strait looking for swordfish, which apparently take catnaps a little below the surface of the water. The Captain can see the prey from the tower and steers the boat so that a man with a harpoon can zap the unsuspecting fish from the extended gangway.

After the Straits we headed south and anchored under the fashionable resort of Taormina. Having struggled ashore in the dinghy we searched in vain for a bus stop or a taxi and decided to take the footpath up to the town. Five hundred feet later we emerged on the edge of Taormina exhausted, sweaty and fit only for a lie down. After a reviving beer we struggled on into the centre, we walked up a narrow lane as the sun began to set and wham, we were hit by a solid wall of tourists bustling up and down the town’s main shopping street. Despite the effort and the crowds Taormina was worth it, a beautiful jumble of elegant palazzos, villas and churches sat on the northern slopes of Etna with wonderful views over the coast from its main square.

The House of the Dead

Before we left Palermo we spent a further day sightseeing with Rosemary, including a visit to the Convento dei Capucinni, a large catacombs where about 8,000 of the great and the good of Palermo have literally been hung out to dry. Most of the bodies date from the 18th and 19th centuries and have been embalmed, put into their Sunday best and then hung up in niches around the catacombs. Some of the bodies still have flesh on them, like dried parchment, while others are just skeletons. The result is a bizarre social history of the dress of middle class Sicilians over two centuries. Far from being creepy or horrifying the catacombs seemed curiously tame, maybe we’ve become so used to super-real Hollywood special effects that reality is becoming increasingly anti-climactic.

Palermo

It’s evening and I’m sat aboard La Fulica in my underpants typing this at arms length to keep the heat of the laptop as far away from my body as possible.  I’m covered in sweat and every now and then a trickle rolls down my stomach and is caught by the barely perceptible breeze to produce a mild chilling sensation.  Christ it’s hot.  Too hot to move or even to think much, too hot to get up and pour oneself yet another drink.  So hot that at last we’ve started to keep proper Mediterranean hours – up reasonably early to get stuff done, then a siesta from about one until five in the afternoon, when the pitiless Sun begins to let up enough for us to start thinking about doing things again.  So hot that the Sicilian dogs have given up the struggle to do anything but keel over in the shade and pant.  Friendly or aggressive they are all the same now, all raising an apologetic eye as you pass as if to say “sorry mate, I would get out of your way, but that would mean I’d have to stop panting for five seconds” or “look, normally I would bite your fucking arm off, but I can’t bite and pant at the same time, OK?”  The air of parched somnambulance is reinforced by the fact that this is the weekend of Ferragosta, the national holiday to celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, when anyone in the South of Italy with any sense has gone to the beach, leaving half the shops, bars and restaurants shut and the towns deserted. 

We have been holed up here for three days so far and will stay for at least another three, waiting for a friend to jet into Palermo airport.  Actually, we need a rest and as we have electricity and a water supply we can catch up on cleaning and laundry and other essential jobs, when we can summon up the energy.

So ... what about Sicily?  From our cursory inspection so far of the coastal strip from Marsala to Palermo, I’m beginning to wonder whether we’re on the right island.  Maybe there’s another Sicily just over the horizon that is actually home to all the myths I feel I’ve been fed about the place from “the Godfather” to the “Rough Guide to Italy”, because the Sicily we seem to be in doesn’t fit them at all.  For a start the culture is much less ”macho” than I expected and the respective roles of men and women actually don’t seem to be as strongly demarcated here as in Northern Italy.  We noticed this first in Marettimo, where the old girls seemed to be just as at home jumping in and out of the little fishing boats in the harbour as the old boys.  For another thing, although the Mafia obviously exists people talk about it and complain about its influence on the island, which it seems to me is a major step forward in curbing its power.  From our guidebooks we were expecting Palermo to be an interesting city, but marred by poverty and bombed out slums left over from the Second World War.  It is in fact an almost heart-breakingly beautiful place.  The old city comprises tall sixteenth and seventeenth century tenements, interspersed with cool parkland and an eclectic mix of Norman and Baroque churches.  There are slums and there is poverty, but there is also a lot of urban regeneration and the worst is still a sight better than Hackney or Dalston and less threatening.  Surprisingly the ambience of the city seems quite like London.  The people here are less style conscious than in the North of Italy, there is a big cultural mix and what looks to be quite a large gay community.  I have a feeling that Palermo will one of these days become a highly fashionable “city break” destination, in the way that Barcelona, Amsterdam, Galway City and even Glasgow are.  Ryan Air do cheap flights and I can only suggest that you come and see for yourself.