In the last article, we covered a lot of ground. I was a little out of breath by the time I finished writing it! But Palermo deserves to have some serious time spent, just taking it in, exploring. So now that you've been brought fully up to speed on the many historic layers of this city, I want to take a deep dive with you and just get out on the streets of Palermo.
Are you ready for a big dose of Sicily’s capital city?
If you want to come here, it's very important that you know that this happens exactly at sunrise. If you really want to catch this place in action, it's best to get there before 7:00am. The first time I attempted to come here, I slept in and showed up at 7:45-ish, and it was mostly over. I got some decent pictures, but it was clear that things were winding down. It was frustrating. The next day I set my alarm for the TRUE butt-crack of dawn, and got here before the sun rose.
Tunisia was going to be my second country in Africa, so I was excited to at least get a taste for it. We didn't have much time here, but we would still be able to see a decent chunk of Tunis. The flight here from Algiers was short but green and scenic as we made our way horizontally across the top of Africa. And as our plane made its final decent over northern Tunisia, I was excited. Here are a few pictures I snapped out the window. Drink 'em in, because everything went to shit from here.
It was a long and unfortunate series of circumstances that delayed our flight from New York to Algiers for 2 full days, but they say that when God closes a door, he opens a window. And for us, this window came in the form of a extremely long layover in Rome. This would give us just enough time to sneak out of the airport to go into the city, so that's exactly what we did.
Even if you know Rome only by reputation, you can probably guess that it's far too big a city to see in a single day, so we decided to break off a single bite-sized piece: a neighborhood called Trastevere.
In Boston, things move fast. The city is lively, dynamic, and ever-changing. However, there are some pieces of the Bostonian puzzle that are quintessential, and eternal. No matter what's going on around them, somehow, they never seem to change.
Today I'm going to single out a couple of those places: Bay Bay and Beacon Hill.
Of all the amazing pieces of civilization subsisting out here in the Westfjords, none sparked my interest like these tiny Icelandic churches. These little structures were often the only sign of human life for miles in any direction. Each time we caught a glimpse of the small pointy steeple from our place on the road, we would come to a screeching halt and dive off down the nearest dirt road to explore. No two of these churches were the same. Each was completely unique, and a few of them had even been left unlocked!