Thinking Allowed: Alla Siciliana

When the Phoenicians founded Palermo about 2800 years ago, they called it 'Sis', meaning 'flower'. While we had a fun week, the city was rather less flowery than most: Palermo seems like a grungy town that is unapologetically having a good time in a chaotic, noisy way.

I (Jakob) arrived a couple of days before the others, since work took me to Pamplona, Stockholm, Dublin and London (while Tamar and the girls hunkered down in the ceaseless week of rain in Kotor, apart from a glorious sunny day they spent in Dubrovnik). I arrived after dark, and scurried through narrow streets and alleys, at one point dodging a huge pile of trash that smelled exactly like ripe eggplant. Motorcycles hurtled past me like F-15 fighters. I stopped in at Pizza Opale, and frig they had good pizza! Italy with food is like Jamaica with sprinting: it's just a national passion and I'm sure running enthusiasts feel the same awe about Jamaica that I do about the freaking incredible eats this country flawlessly produces.

OK, I'm getting carried away. The highlight of Palermo, for me, was definitely walking an hour along garbagy noisy streets with traffic laws being flouted left and right, in order to reach Monte Pellegrino, a sudden kilometre-high jutting of rock that appears out of nowhere. I just this minute learned that Goethe thought this particular spot was "the most beautiful promontory in the world" which gives you an idea. I passed old ladies breathlessly conversing in Italian, and eavesdropped for practice. I passed some goats, an extremely poorly-restored shrine, a thousand cacti, stunning views of Palermo on all sides.

Eventually I arrived at the Santuario di Santa Rosalia. This was also great! An unassuming concretey facade turned out to conceal this incredible grotto: half-church and half-cave. It is beautiful and peaceful and, dare I say, holy-feeling? Santa Rosalia's bones were found there in the 1100's and (though I am not the most reliable Italian reader) apparently one fervent woman paraded the bones through town, including throwing one (?) at a plague sufferer and INSTANTLY healing him (what a moment!) Anyway, the plague went away right around then and boom, Santa Rosalia's the Protector Saint of Palermo. Good old Goethe loved this grotto, saying it "better befits the humility of the saint than the sumptuous festivities that are celebrated to commemorate her retirement from the world" (we didn't get to celebrate her yearly festival, but even in the 1880s a British visitor said it was a "pagan saturnalia". It honestly makes me sad that nobody disses anything like that anymore. Now it's all Elon Musk saying "Zuck is a cuck"; British people, we're depending on you to bring back the highbrow burns!)

So yeah, we spent a week enfolded in Palermo's raunchy embrace. We had granita for breakfast, which was even better than any of us expected and is possibly Tamar's #1 favourite breakfast ever (she is a sucker for the cold drinks). The girls all swam in the Mediterranean and played on rocky beaches. We hiked all the way back out across the promontory to the sanctuary so they could see it too. There were visits to imposing cathedrals and palaces (I missed out as I was working, but have it on good authority.) Our date night turned into a long walk to buy Zadie's present at literally Geppetto's Toy Shop, which was adorable. We sampled the gelati, of course, and Aurora was over the moon when she found a pistachio-cream flavour just like Llao Llao in Las Palmas. I learned that Palermo is sort of the Montreal of Italy, except really it turns out Montreal is the Palermo of Canada if you see what I mean.

On our last night we went back to Pizza Opale for a last hurrah, then gelato, then to bed early as we had to be up at 3AM for a mega-early flight. Walking to our bus at 3:45, there were dozens of people on the streets just hanging out. Cars honked their horns heedlessly. A gust of wind knocked a lens out of Tamar's sunglasses and sent it cartwheeling away forever. And off we went to Cagliari, where we just arrived this morning! It already feels immeasurably quieter, calmer, cleaner, serener, than Palermo, but maybe we'll miss the frenetic charm, the world-beating promontory, the single crammed pedestrian street, the unforgettable granita breakfasts, and on and on. Arrivederci Palermo!