"You won't keep yourself away from here for long"

Sicilia.
BREATH-TAKING.
The best weekend I've had in a LONG LONG LONG LONG time.
This blog post will do the weekend no justice, but I'll sure try. It was the kind of weekend that will be a memory for life.

I "woke-up" at 3:45 am on Friday morning (I say "wake-up" because I never actually slept) and walked to the Vatican to meet up with Mor. She and I walked from there to school, and met up with Yu and Rola at the Piazza Trilussa. From there we split at taxi to the airport and made out way to our gate. We got there like 2 hours early, but so was everyone else in our class.
We went to the cafe in the airport for a little breakfast - I got a bottle of water and a croissant.

We boarded our TINY plane and departed for Sicily, Palermo with the sun still resting under the horizon.
As soon as the run rose, all I could see was the sea. Soon, the mountains came into view on the other side of the plane. They were so amazing. So tall, up into the clouds.

We landed and got the train from Punta Raisi (the Airport) into Palermo Centrale Station. On the train we met Andriae, a hilarious, and kind native Sicilian on his way home for the weekend from the military. We spoke as much as we could with him and he taught us some Sicilian dialect! He showed us the way from the station to our hotel, and left.

We got in at 8 am and check in wasn't until 12, so we all piled into one room and slept. 5 girls on the futon, 6 people in the bed. We waited for our professor, and some other people who landed later than us.

After that, we walked around for a bit, and got a family style dinner at an amazing local restaurant. We all wanted to try the local sea-food (which is AMAZING) and some of the dishes included Squid Ink pasta, fresh swordfish, Spaghetti with Mussles, Zhuccini and Prawns, and delicious grilled calamari.

From there we went out for a few beers with the professor! He even took a shot with a couple of us!!
The shots were amazing - "Rum e Perra" (bacardi rum with a pear juice chaser) for 1 Euro.
We left the bar and went looking for somewhere else to have a few drinks and dance - it ended up being this awesome club in a cave underground. We made our way home, hung out for a while longer, then a couple of us went out again at 4 am in search of food - we ended up in the same area as all the bars, got some delicious 1 euro sandwiches, and went back to the hotel.

The next morning we woke up and got ready to walk around. We walked to the catacombs, which were closed, and so we walked to the Castel Zisa. It started pouring, but the castel was AMAZING.

Castel Zisa was built around 1150, and still represents Paradise in Palermo. You look out one window you see the mountains, you look out the other window, you see the ocean. "La Montana e il Mare"

Then we went to an AMAZINGLY beautiful Norman Cathedral. It was so gorgeous, and I was thinking about Sicily and how gorgeous it is, I was looking at a statue of The Virgin Mary, and all I heard when I asked her about Sicily was,
"You'll be back - you can't keep yourself away for long". It was so amazing to hear, and I also knew it was true.

We walked back to the hotel, and got ready for... THE OPERA.

We went to the Opera, Nabucco. It was so gorgeous. It was on my list of things to do in Italy - see an Italian Opera.
Our seats were on the very top of the Teatro, and the view was incredible. It was a two hour opera, and then we went to dinner with the professore again.
Another family style dinner, and we tried a little bit of everything, Christina got the sardine balls, and they were pretty delicious! I also tried artichoke blossoms, and the Panelle - fried chickpea and parsley. SO GOOD!

We made our way back to the hotel in the pouring rain and decided to go to bed - we were in the restaurant until 12:30!

We woke up early again and got ready to go. Our first thing we wanted to see was the ocean. I walked along the beach and picked up a shell and a piece of sea-glass. (So that I could return the shell to the same spot one day). Then we took a train up into the mountains to get a view of all of Palermo. It was so amazing, even though it was pouring rain.

Up on the mountains, I got amazing food, and great pastries. We tried Lobster tails (a great pastry) and then caught the bus back down to Palermo.

We got pizza in a great pizzeria, and walked back to the hotel. We got our stuff and decided to get to the airport early. So we took the train into Punto Raisi, and hung out in the airport for about an hour and a half, two hours.

I got an amazing Sicilian Cuisine cookbook, and flipped through it as I ate some delicious milk chocolate, and waited for the plane. We boarded and soon we were back in the air on the way home.

The turbulence was so bad, that the pilot had to fly in the opposite direction, and we flew over Napoli!
We made it home, took a train into Trastevere, Mor and I took the tram over the Tiber, and waited (for a half hour) for the 23. One of the guys from my apartment was waiting for the 23 as well, so we all talked and walked back from the 23.

I got home at 12:30 and took a shower and went to bed.

Sicilia. The most amazing place I've EVER seen.

Ciao.