Too much going on to write.

It is - and I have to check - Thursday, April 17 - and I've just woken up on the Planeta wine estate in Menfi, La Foresteria, on the south western coast of Sicily. Outside stretches long beds tidily planted with different aromatic herbs, and beyond rolling hills down to the very blue sea.

We're in a ample room with colorful rugs on the tiled floor and 2 doors opening to a little gravelled terrace outside. Victor sleeps next door in solitary splendor. When we arrived yesterday in the afternoon, we sat there balancing a late lunch on our knees and sharing a bottle of Planeta wine.

Then a sauna, which unfortunately got never really got hot, but Oswaldo and Victor nonetheless jumped in the icy cold pool, while I watched, snug in my thick white robe.

Dinner was a formal affair, all 15 or so guests, including a Brazilian couple, seated along a massive table and eating a 4 course tasting menu, with harmonized wines. Unexpectedly, we have so far not experienced, let's say, Italian food, huge plates of spaghetti, and so on, but rather a nouvelle ciusine version of the same, more intricate, and from Victor's sometimes fallen look, with way smaller portions.

The day after our operatic dinner, Tuesday, April 15, we started the day with a mission. Victor and I wanted shoes - good shoes - for the upcoming weddings, and trailed by a patient Oswaldo, we picked our way up to THE shopping street, Via della Libertá, cutting through picturesque dilapidated little alleys, abundant street markets with knock-off purses and watches, and past the imposing Teatro Massimo, one of the best in Italy

- in front of which we stopped to have a coffee. Then we forged on to the treelined avenue with big name shops, Prada, Gucci, MaxMara, etc., where it turned out, alas, that they were all closing for lunch! So, on a side-street, we found a lovely little cafe to have an elegant salad lunch with, what seemed to be slender residents of that neighbourhood

- and then walked over to the Teatro Politeama on the Piazza Garibaldi, to meet our guide Raffaela, for our Palermo Walking Tour.

She took us down the busy Via Maqueda, crossing the Vittorio Emanuele, which has become 'our' street - we can always find our hotel from that street, and past the Quattro Canti, where curved walls depict the 4 seasons, to opulent Piazza Pretoria with it's wide fountain with figures so, for the times, naked, that it was called the Fontana de la Vergogna (it's nestled between at least 5 churches...) in front of the Prefettura.

With that Rio sensitiveness that we have we notice clumps of disgruntled men, Mafioso perhaps? When the Mayor arrives in a discreet little car and with a strikingly informal security apparatus (small dusty cars, guys jogging in mismatched sports outfits - all shouting at the same time), they all  converge on his car. Turns out they're are cab-drivers on strike. 

We see two more churches, one, Capitolare de San Cataldo, the seat of the knights of Malta, (on the right) with 3 Byzantine domes on top. The inside is very bare, with the old stones unadorned, which enables you to admire the intricate arches.

On the other side, beneath the ancient Norman tower, is La Martorana, replete with the 12th century Byzantine mosaics we saw in Monreale, but perhaps even more striking in this more intimate setting.

Then it's time to see the Ballaro feria, a street market with an African flavor that stretches away over several neighbourhoods. Victor leaves us for a separate activity involving the fitness room and Wellness Center at out hotel, and thus misses the street art, which adorns the run-down neighbourhood. 

but it is late afternoon and there is not a lot of activity. We see the heaps of freshly harvested artichokes that we'll later see in the fields, and the interesting-looking green cauliflower, neither of which we have yet seen on a menu

Then Rafaella leads us at a fast trot up a long worn-out street in a quarter which will probably see better days after the investors fix it up, this in order that we will catch the Capella Palatina before it closes. It is inside the parliament building and there's a lot of security, but we get to see another church with those impressive mosaics, which have become familiar by now.

We walk back on the Via Vittorio Emanuele, through the New Gate, decorated with 4 sad faces of vanquished Turks.

Raffaela shows us a special Gelato place in front of the cathedral, and we say our good byes, I savouring a fabulous, fabulous pistachio ice cream, with clumps of marzipan. Heaven. Then we walk back to our hotel.