Our journey to Palermo started last night with a 3km walk to the station from our hostel in Florence. We got on one of the Italian Eurostar trains down to Rome and admired some of the gorgeous Italian countryside zooming past, until shaun got bored and started playing with some amaretti biscuit we'd bought as you can tell from the picture!!
When we reached Rome we got on a sleeper train heading for Palermo and it was the strangest experience ever! The train was like a long corridor with little compartments off which had two sets of bunkbeds. We grabbed the top ones before anyone else came in and had a little picnic of emmental cheese slices, proscuitto ham and olive oil bread!
The train journey was pretty noisey and quite rickety, and I felt like I was going to fall out of bed numerous times! It was a weird journey but it was nice to wake up in a different part of the world!
Sicily is quite different from the rest of Italy, its a lot hotter and has palm trees abd cacti by the sides of the road! Its not very touristy where we are staying so i've been trying to put on my best italian accent, although I greeted someone with "gratzi" (thank you) before!
When we arrived in Sicily we headed straight for the hotel, which was another 3km walk, which tool us about 1 hour and a half to stop for water and gelatto breaks!! After a quick change we had a bit of an explore to see what Palermo has to offer but most places were shut because it's a Sunday! We headed down to the harbour and onto the seafront where there seemes to be loads of people gathering and a lonely helicopter going up and down the shore. We stuck around for about 10 minutes but started getting bored so we headed back into the centre of Palermo to find a cafe or place for tea. After about an hour of leaving the sea front we saw the italian version of the red arrows doing a display and other planes dokng tricks! We couldn't believe it!
So after that we eventually found somewhere to eat and had a pizza, although sicilian food is a little different from Italian food because its inspired by morocco and tunisia, so you can find things like couscous and chickpeas alongside pizzas and pasta.
We've got a lot more of Palermo to explore tomorrow but we are both shattered from the sleeper train that the only thing I want to do now is sleep!