Evening in Palermo

 After the afternoon siesta, the stores started to open again and traffic was flowing again. Here we at the Quattro Canti in Palermo a few years ago.

The dome of the church of San Guiseppe Teatini one of the buildings that is at the Quattro Canti. I love this church, the interior of which is so baroque and so playful. It was San Guiseppe's day and the church was busy with everyone coming to pray to St Joseph. If I never left the US, I would never know the importance of this and so many other saints in Sicilian church life. Not only that I would never have tasted the incredible pastry that they make to honor San Guiseppe. I don't always plan to be in such and such a place for such and such a day. I spread out my vacation throughout the year so I am not in the US for much longer than 6 months or else I get bored. The humdrum life can get anyone really depressed, to work, come back, what to eat for dinner, grocery shopping, put gas in the car, watch a little telly, go to sleep...... no wonder the mental health status of Americans are in the dumps. So when I'm in a place that I'm visiting and it's a saint's day, it becomes an added bonus. It is expensive to travel but with rigorous budgetting trips can still be made. It takes a lot of work to travel independently, without the help of tour groups but the effort is worh it because you pick the places. This is evident in our 2 trips to Sicily a few years ago. How else would you get to spend an evening in Palermo?

"Palermo, once experienced, never forgotten" How true. That is the promotional slogan for Palermo. This was during our second trip to Sicily and it was on this trip we went to Villa Palagonia in Bagheria 20 minutes by train from Palermo.http://socalgalopenwallet.blogspot.com/search?q=villa+palagonia