Sunday at the Beach

 Today my roommate and I took a taxi to the house of ISMETT's director of nursing (she's American) in Mondello.  She had offered to show us around and take us to the beach.  (Mondello is one of the public beaches in Palermo in Northern Sicily.)  Her and her husband live a few blocks from the beach.  We started the day out with mimosas...can't really go wrong with mimosas!  The oranges here in Palermo are fabulous.  My personal favorite has been these blood red oranges (arancia rossa), and "arancia rossa" juice is always available.  If you get orange juice, there are multiple options for which kind of orange juice you want.  (There's also apricot, peach, and pear juices!)  Anyway, mimosas typically here consist of red orange juice and prosecco, and it's so good.

After mimosas, we walked to the beach.  Sicilia is particularly unique I think because you have these huge mountainsides set against a Mediterranean Sea backdrop, and it's absolutely unreal.  The water is beautiful, and I'm glad we got to go see it during the tourist off season, b/c I'm told during the summers it gets unbelievably crowded.

We did a late lunch at a restaurant that sat right on the water.  Once again, my options were limited due to the menu being mostly seafood, but I did manage to find a pork dish!  Of course, more wine came with lunch and we found some gelato from one of the street stands after lunch.  I got fragola e nocciola gelato (strawberry and hazelnut...Sicilians are big on hazlenuts too), and it was fabulous.  The guy even gave me an extra cookie b/c he loves Americans and I told him I liked his cardigan haha!

 Weekends in Mondello seem like a lot of fun, a lot of people walk outside with their dogs and today there was some sort of festival going on.  All the kids were dressed up in costumes and they were adorable.  I saw a few dressed up as Native Americans, which I thought was really funny.  Mount Pellegrino is also situated right next to Mondello, so we might try to take a trip all the way up to the top one of these days. 

One more thing about Palermo, and I guess Italy in general...the drivers are INSANE.  Drivers will go as fast as they want, and people pass each other all of the time even though  there are no passing lanes.  Drivers will also turn down a street even if they see you crossing and they will come within inches of you.  Roads are usually not marked and there is no indication of whether it's supposed to be a one or two lane road...drivers will just make it into whatever they want, so if they want to get ahead of the car in front of them they will just create another lane to drive in.  I haven't seen a single car without a dent or scratch on it.  Motorcylists are even worse, they will just weave in and out of traffic and might even drive on the sidewalk.  Cars actually will just park on the sidewalks too if they feel like it.  It's actually really terrifying to ride in anything that goes on the road, and even stressful to walk outside sometimes, but at least I haven't gotten hit yet!  Def a few close calls though. 

A few more pictures of Mondello to leave you with, b/c the view is absolutely breathtaking.  Ciao!