Our treat for Christmas 2021 was an apartment near the beach in Mondello, a favourite escape for Palermo residents.
We accidentally rented a room with shared facilities, but were very lucky becuase there were no other guests this time of year, so we had the house to ourselves. Christmas Eve was spent stocking up on nice things to eat and settling in for a few days in one place.
As it turned out, though, most of the cafes along the waterfront stayed open throughout the holiday period, so we were able to add to the pantry each day… needless to say we hardly stopped eating!
Back on the road after the break we are headed for the history-drenched Syracuse where (Covid travel chaos permitting) we plan to meet some wonderful friends for New Year.
We broke up the drive with two coincidental stops. First, we took a detour off the main road to stop for lunch, unwittingly and entirely by accident at the location of the ancient Battle of Himera. The next day we climbed up to some ruins at Cefalu, which turned out to have been a temple erected in monument to that battle. It was only later, wanting to learn a little about a desintation of Syracuse, that we discovered that the battle was a huge turning point in the City’s ancient history, so we had accidentally traced an ideal route!
The Battle of Himera by Giuseppe Sciuti – Public Domain, Wikimedia Link
For whatever reason we have rarely researched the history of places we visit. We look up food and customs, landmarks and famous residents but history and especially ancient history hasn’t been our starting point. It has been a happy accident and a great way to discover a new place so will be something we do much more I think.
