Palermo, the capital of Sicily, has a similar history to Cagliari and was founded by the Phoenicians in 734 BC as “Ziz”. It became part of the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire and eventually part of the Byzantine Empire for over 1000 years. It has become the fifth most populated city in Italy containing over 1.2 million people. As the Roman Empire was falling apart, Palermo fell under the control of several Germanic tribes. The first were the Vandals in AD 440 under the rule of King Krause.
Last night was Italian night for dinner. I tried the cuttlefish starter which was dreadful. It was really tough, a bit like eating thick snot with the nostrils thrown in. Claire wisely chose a pasta starter. I had chosen the veal for my main because we never get chance to eat it often in England. Not sure what meat or cut I was given but it wasn’t like any veal I had ever had before. Usually its a light almost white meat but this was dark brown with a large bone running through the middle. It was so tough I couldn’t eat it. The waiter took it away and then brought me another one. Not sure if he thought I had a bad one or if he thought I was hungry but this was just as tough as the first.
I was never very impressed by Italian food anyway but you thought that being an Italian ship they would know whet they were doing. Instead we had the worst meal by far so far. Although the food was crap, the night was great; they started some music which stopped people eating and they started to dance. I think they were glad to get away from their food or maybe it was a distraction to take our minds of it. Either way, it worked.
It seemed to turn a bad into a memorable occasion for slightly better reasons than we would have otherwise had.
Claire must have asked someone to take one of the pair of us on the Gala night. Thats good as we have so few of the pair of us. I guess that all our friends have more than we do. This one might even do for the front cover of Claire’s next year blog book.
Cheers everyone. As we left port before my mum got home from hospital yesterday, I had no mobile connection to be able to talk to her so I emailed Harriet to ask her to ring her when she got home from work explaining our situation again and to email me back with what she found out about my dad. Harriet must have misunderstood and texted me back so I still had no idea his diagnosis. This internet is so slow, it takes ages to even upload your email so I was online for longer than it took me to post a blog before my emails came in. Thats when I realized that Harriet must have texted so I emailed her back again. I tried a couple of times but didn’t manage to upload any more emails until this morning when we were pulling into port anyway.
This picture is when we were leaving port yesterday and the clouds looked as if they were beginning to clear so we hoped that we might have more luck with the weather in Palermo.
No such luck; when we arrived this morning at about 5.30am it was still chucking it down. The clouds must have been clearing somewhere as we had a rainbow. We decided to go to the buffet bunfight for breakfast as breakfast in our restaurant is the weak link and we thought it was bound to have bacon, beans and tomatoes. We were so disappointed but the self service was even worse than the other one. They did have bacon but it tasted of frankfurters. On the continent they criticize British sausages saying that they are made of crap with hardly any meat content. These are the same people that offer us fried frankfurters for breakfast. I rest my case.
As the morning has progressed, the weather has got worse rather than better so we will stay put unless it changes for the better. There is absolutely no point in walking around in the rain; we wouldn’t enjoy it anyway. Sorry to moan about the food because yesterday’s lunch was probably the best so far; so its not all bad. We just happened to get two bad ones on the trot. At least we know now to stay away from the self service permanently. Tonight is Gala night; whatever that means?
I was never very impressed by Italian food anyway but you thought that being an Italian ship they would know whet they were doing. Instead we had the worst meal by far so far. Although the food was crap, the night was great; they started some music which stopped people eating and they started to dance. I think they were glad to get away from their food or maybe it was a distraction to take our minds of it. Either way, it worked.
Claire had a dance with our waiter and it wasn’t long before a conga line started which we all joined. When we got into the main room, we could see that it spread around the entire place.
It seemed to turn a bad into a memorable occasion for slightly better reasons than we would have otherwise had.
As we stayed in yesterday, it gave me a chance to catch up on some domestics. I uploaded Claire’s photo’s from her camera and recharged her battery. This gives you all chance to see a couple of me.
This picture is when we were leaving port yesterday and the clouds looked as if they were beginning to clear so we hoped that we might have more luck with the weather in Palermo.
No such luck; when we arrived this morning at about 5.30am it was still chucking it down. The clouds must have been clearing somewhere as we had a rainbow. We decided to go to the buffet bunfight for breakfast as breakfast in our restaurant is the weak link and we thought it was bound to have bacon, beans and tomatoes. We were so disappointed but the self service was even worse than the other one. They did have bacon but it tasted of frankfurters. On the continent they criticize British sausages saying that they are made of crap with hardly any meat content. These are the same people that offer us fried frankfurters for breakfast. I rest my case.
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