Sicily, Calabria and Sicily again. We arrived back in Palermo on the 18th and immediately started celebrating my birthday. Eden downloaded Canadian music and we had beer on the terrace. That night we went out to a live funk concert in the park and met up with my friends from Canada and Paris. Marcus introduced us to friends from Palermo who we met later in the week for a fun day in town. Two or three days of birthday celebrations included drinks at little bar...

The most wonderful, but also most difficult, thing about traveling is that you meet like minded people. Some are passing friendships and others you hope to see again. But regardless for the time being, you have to let go of all those wonderful people. Who knows, maybe one day I'll receive a postcard with the name of a city and a date.

After four days in Calabria with family I've now made it back to sicilia. I met up with Eden and Sarah in Catania, and unbeknownst to us it was the festival of the patron saint of the city, Santa Agata. There were fireworks, parades, street fairs, mobs of people following a procession of the statue of the saint and her relics. Each church that they stopped at set off their own display of fireworks and then the procession moved on. Throngs of people crowde...

Yesterday we wandered around Palermo visiting churches, monuments and parks. Later we went to a piazza (near the one of the other night) where people fill the centre dancing to live dj music and smoke from the local street meat vendors fills the air. The piazza has a section that was bombed out in WWII and is still left as a reminder. There is graffiti art of all kinds from religious to political. After a phenomenal grilled fish dinner we danced until 3:30 am...

Well, last night I arrived in Palermo after a looonnnggg day. We immediately went out for a little beer in a local park where vendors sold beer and panini. Today I spent a perfect day in mondello with three Argentinian girls, a Canadian girl from Vancouver and a guy from NYC. We lazed on the beach, rented a paddle boat and spent hours in the water with my camera. Later we went out to a spot in Palermo where there are a few bars around a packed piazza and peop...