Monreale

Unfortunately Tom and I didn’t sleep as well as we thought we would. I don’t think the mattress was the problem, but this nagging cough I came to Italy with may of had something to do with it (thanks Leah – lol). So with that being said I didn’t find myself waking up until 9:30 and when I did, I woke up tired. I hate that feeling. I was determined that we wouldn’t take any mid-day naps today that would screw up our sleep schedule any further. Tom went down to get breakfast and because I thought they stopped serving at 10:00 (found out later the actually stop at 10:30) I asked him to bring some stuff back to the room for me, as I wanted to get in the shower right away (for anyone who knows me knows what a travesty my hair looks like in the morning. It is not acceptable for public appearance!) Once again the hotel staff did not disappoint and actually put a plate together for me and brought it to the room. It was a nice plate of ham and cheese slices, a bowl of mixed fruit with oranges, kiwi, and pineapple, and some other fruit I couldn’t identify, yogurt, and an assortment of 4 mini cake slices. It was perfect! I think I failed to name the hotel in my previous post, but in case anybody is reading this in preparation for their own trip to Palermo it is the Alma Hotel. http://www.almahotel.it/

Unfortunately we were not able to see Alissa today so we went with my alternate plan of visiting the city of Monreale. Monreale is just a short drive out of Palermo and contains a cathedral built by Norman monarch William II (1153-1189). The cathedral only took about 10 years to build and the mosaics inside the cathedral utilized 4,885 pounds of gold. We asked the hotel owners the best way to get there and they suggested the city bus in lieu of a taxi. A taxi would cost around 60 Euro one way and a bus ticket was only 1,40 Euro one way. Ahh yeah, we definitely took the bus.

We followed the directions to the bus stop which was about a 2 kilometer walk away and as we did I saw a sign that said Purto Nuova. I recognized this as a name of a geocache I looked at on the app yesterday, so I pulled out my phone and found that I was just a little over 100 feet from it. It was an easy grab and then we continued on our way to the bus stop.

The bus was packed and there were many stops on the way to Monreale but after about 35 minutes we were there. Monreale is on a hill and there was a nice view of Palermo on the hike up the road to the cathedral. It was shortly after 1:00 when we arrived and we found that the cathedral was closed. It seems like most everything closes for lunch in Italy. We wandered around the grounds for a bit and tried to find a geocache. Unfortunately I think the cache may be gone as I couldn’t find it and neither did the last 4 cachers who left entries on the log page. We ultimately decided to grab some lunch and wait for the cathedral to open back up at 2:30. There was a nice little restaurant in the square by the cathedral. Tom ordered a calazone and I got a pizza. We should have only got one of these and split it, but we were assuming the portions would be smaller European size. We assumed wrong. It was good and we made as big of a dent as we could in our meals. We finished up right at 2:30 and went to find where to get tickets for the cathedral.

We ended up in the book store and was given several options of tickets. Did we want to go to the roof? Did we want an audio guide? Did we want to go to the cloisters? Just as we thought we figured it out, then she added did we want a tour guide? We went with the tour guide and found it was going to be just Tom and I and the guide. Just the way we like it. We technically didn’t need to buy any tickets to get into the cathedral, but it was nice to have the guide point out the scenes from the bible that were depicted in the mosaics and to get a history of what we were looking at. The ticket we did buy provided us entry into the cloisters which are part of the old Benedictine abbey attached to the cathedral. The cloisters contain 228 paired columns and capitals with very few being alike. The columns contain a range of styles mixing religious, pagan, classical, mythical and other iconography.

After the tour ended we went back inside the cathedral to take a few more pictures and bought the additional entrance into the chapel and terrace level. The view of Palermo and Monreale from the roof of the cathedral was outstanding and worth the 180 steps and 4 Euros/person.

Upon climbing back down the stairs and back into the cathedral we realized they were closing as the lights had been turned off. I grabbed the bus schedule and saw that we had 15 minutes to make it back down the hill to the bus stop to catch the next bus. No problem we made it. The bus ride back took only 20 minutes. Overall a great way to spend the day, especially since we were both dragging.

We decided that we would wander to a couple of markets that our hotel pointed out, but we found that both were not very busy (they were probably hopping during the day) so we headed back to the main road to make our way back to the hotel. Walking down this pedestrian only street it really made me feel like we were walking through Bay View Bash, except with way more people. We found a little sandwich shop where I got a ham and cheese panini with some french fries that we shared and then went back to the hotel to write the blog and relax. Hopefully tonight will result in a better night of sleep!

Stats of the Day

Geocaches Found: 1
Steps Walked: 17,773
Times Coughed: Too many