Rome

The heat had really got to us, so having got our heads together in the cool of Mt Etna we decided to get back onto to the mainland and head due north. A full day's driving later we arrived in one of the world's mightest capitals, and one of our favourite cities, Rome.

Now driving in Rome isn't one of our most favourite activities in life, and certainly isn't recommended for the faint of heart, so here's the bit when we send our utmost thanks and love to our very own special friend TomTom. To be honest we would have been totally lost without him directing us through the traffic in search of the camping ground. Heaven only knows how we managed this last time around in the technologically inept TanVan. But sure enough there we were, navigated direct to the reception (humour and relationship intact) and our home for the next four nights.

Romulus & Remus with the She Wolf - iconic symbol of Rome

We had last visited Rome back in 1998,and we keen to revisit the Camping Flaminio, a sort suburban train right from the central city. The girl on reception informed us that there had been quite a few changes to the camping since then, but nothing could have prepared us for the shock - or rather pleasant surprise which was to await us at the shower blocks... What were once humble ablution facilities had been totally replaced with a fully marbled beauty complex, with full length mirrors, skylit showers, automatic flushing WCs, a beauty room complete with magnifying mirrors, and to top it all off - opera and classical music was being played through the stereo!!

Being our second visit to this magnificent city, we really were able to relax and enjoy ourselves a little more. While we certainly had places to go and things to see, we weren't in such a rush to cram in all the tourist sights, which left us plenty of time for soaking up the atmosphere, enjoying the food and engaging in another of life's pleasures, shopping!!

Ensuring our return to Rome, tossing a coin at the Trevi Fountain

The shopping fest aside (I think we've seen at least every shop in Rome, some even twice, and it's much better than in Florence should anyone be interested), we did manage to revisit some of our favourite sights (the Parthenon, the Colosseum, the Forum, the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Plaza Navona, St Peters - including the trek to the very top of the dome), as well as a few new ones - the Capitoline Museum, the Basilicia di San Giovanni (Rome's cathedral), Via Sanni market, the very spooky skeleton construction of Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione, where everything including the chandeliers are made out of the bones of generations of our old friends the Capuchin monks, hmmm must say it's not a terrribly good look...

I won't bore you with too many more details, but rather let the photos do the talking.

Unfortunately, yet again these Capucin monks aren't too fond of the paparazzi so we don't have any snaps of the skeletal chapel to share with you : (

The masive Basilica di San Giovanni, the city's cathedral

The Colosseum

Admiring the view at the Forum

Just the two of us, the Forum

Lat in roots

Sanduwiches galore!

"You don't say!" - Swiss Guards gossiping at the Vatican

St Peter's Square

The Roman skyline

Pigeon and friend, Ponte Sant'Angelo

Detail, Fontana del Nettuno, Piazza Navona

However the Capitoline Museum was without a doubt the highlight of our visit, and deserves particular mention. It is perched high upon Capitoline Hill, standing proud over the Forum and Colosseum beyond. It also happens to be one of the world's oldest museums, founded in 1471 when the pope of the day donated a few bronze sculptures to the city. It also happens to be one complete and utter knockout for anyone remotely interested in art and history, crammed to gills with one exceptional piece of sculpture after another, the very original version of Romulus & Remus with the She-Wolf (the enduring symbol of Rome), and pisellos galore! Here's just a few of our favourites...

The equine

Spinario (boy with splinter)

Watch your step

Constantine

Toes

View over the Forum

Peachy bottoms

More toes

Eyes

Fingers

Suffice to say, Rome remains one of our very favourite cities in the world. In fact, following this visit, we love it even more!!

SJ

Mt Etna

While still sweltering on Sicily it seemed that there was a sure way to avoid the heat (which was still pushing the upper limits of the 30's) and that was to head up the side of Mt Etna to the mountain station at 1900m, only just over half way up this 3300m ish towering volcano. An amazing drive from the coast winds up the forested slopes and cuts straight through the lava flows to where the base camp and winter ski field has been built.

Smoking Mt Etna looms up on the horizon

View down to Catania, destroyed and now rebuilt following the 1669 lava flow

The base camp at 1900m is a very interesting place to build a tourist village that's for sure. Not only is it on the side of one of the most active volcanoes in the world, but these cooled lava slopes are also on the same side of the mountain where the lava flows every time the mountain erupts. The last time this happened was only in 2001 so maybe they believe there'll be enough time to make money before the next one wipes them off the face of Etna?

There's a two story house somewhere under all that lava

Older craters and lava flows - would make for great ski terrain in winter?

The jet black volcanic ash and lava fromtop to bottom

Enjoying the fresh, if sulphuric air

Jagged lava flow from the 2001 eruption

Wickse parked at a cool 1900m

Amazing sight and a nice place to cool off as it stayed below 30 the whole time, the first time in months. I even trekked up a further 800 vertical meters to the start of the craters, one of which was blowing ash in my face every few minutes with huge vents of sulphur and ash.

Trekking up the ski field of Mt Etna

Eruption from one of Etna's upper vents

Humm, getting bigger and closer...

Oops I might be a little in the way...

Cough splutter! Still one very active mountain side!

Pretty exciting stuff but as it was getting dark I was keen to try to catch a lift down the mountain in one of the 4x4 jeeps, but unfortunately there were none up top when I finally got there. As the sun was setting as I arrived I couldn't stay for long and hightailed it back down over the volcanic sand and scoria encrusted mountain side, just making it back down before it was completely pitch black.

EH

Palermo

We were very much looking forward to spending a couple of days in Palermo, however we weren't quite sure what we were going to find there. The city itself is a very intriguing blend of east and west, being in turns an Arab Emirate, the seat of a Norman kingdom, the German House of Hohenstaufen, passing then to the Holy Roman Emperor, then to the French, the Spanish and the Austrians, until the Spanish Bourbons united Sicily with Naples in 1734, and it later became part of a unified Italy. This final transition happened as recently as 1860, so it's no wonder that we had more than a bit of trouble identifying the people and their city as being 'Italian', something they certainly do as well.

Porta Nuova, gateway to central Palermo

...in detail

Fontana Pretoria, otherwise known as the 'Fountain of Shame' to the many church going Palermitans who were offended by the flagrant nudity back in 1573

But look around and you can see evidence of this cross cultural history everywhere, from the proud Norman palazzos to churches which look more like mosques, and grand baroque buildings. Compared to other towns and cities in Sicily which we've visited so far, it's quite an architectural hotch-potch, but I guess that's exactly what makes Palermo as interesting as it is! It must be said though, that this city certainly isn't going to win any beauty pageants. It is dirty, dusty, decayed and really quite shabby. As our friend Cheryl says, it's hard to tell whether you're in the Med or in Cairo. But again, it's a working city, and that's what makes us like it.

On the streets of downtown Palermo

There certainly are many things to see and do in this town, but with the temperature still pushing into the high 30s we decided to take it easy, and concentrate more on soaking up the atmosphere rather than dashing from one tourist queue to another. And so we did.

Marionettes in a shop window

Acqua anyone?

The highlight for me was undoubtably the Capuchin Catacombs. Now, you know what a catacomb is going to be like - We've been to the ones in Paris, where having run out of space in the cemeteries, Monks went around stacking up skeletons and skulls and bits of bones along a network of tunnels in disused limestone quarries. But ladies and gentlemen, the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo are quite a bit different...

In what is at best a seriously macabre tourist attraction, but also a rather extraordinary historical record, over 8000 Palermitans from the last few centuries have been dehydrated, perserved, embalmed (call it what you will) and dressed in their favourite clothes before being strung up or laid down, some in glass cases, within the excavated tombs beneath the city.

Apparently this was originally only intended for the Capuchin monks, but it seems it fast became something of a status symbol to be perserved in this manner along with the monks, and many prosperous citizens requested to be preserved here, dressed in specific clothing, in their wills. Some also asked to have their clothing changed at frequent intervals!!!

Within the spooky, spooky corridors there are many different areas specifically set aside, one for monks, for professionals, for men, for women, for children and even for virgins. Some of them were just well spooky, with bits of their skin falling off, and others stuck for eternity in poses which make then look like their final moments were spent in utmost pain. Or maybe that's the rigamortis? Either way, this has to be the most spookiest, shockingest, seriously bizarre place I've ever visited in my life, and even though it was me that was desperate to visit, I found myself needing to get out after only a few minutes. Everywhere you look there'd be even more eyeless faces or skeletons scaring out, some with their arms outstretched towards you. Ugghhhh!!!

It is still completely beyond my comprehension just why so many parents were intent on dragging their small children through the corridors of this horrible place. Or maybe they were paying respects to their great grandfathers??

Yet again, photography was not allowed, but I just can't resist just one to show you courtesy of Google Images...

Capuchin corpses

If you'd like to see some more embalmed and otherwise Capuchin corpse action however, click here

I'll leave it up to you...

Souvenir shopping at the catacombes

Embalmed bodies aside, we took a tour - in Italian - of the Norman Palazzo (now the seat of the Sicilian government) and the intricately mosaic-ed (or so they tell us as it was all being renovated and hence covered up) Palatine chapel.

The imposing facade of the once Norman fortress

The three tiered loggia of the Palazzo dei Normanni

We also stopped by the magnificent cathedral, resplendent in its distinct Arab-Norman style - all ziggurats and geometric patterns - which is unique to Sicily. The Norman conquerors it seemed, were so in awe of the cultured Arab lifestyle they found when they arrived on the island, that they shamelessy borrowed and improved upon it, spending vast amounts of money on palaces and churches, and encouraging a cosmopolitan atmosphere at court. They say that William II, the grandson of the conquering Roger I, even had a harem!

Amongst all this wealth and decadence I guess it was only a matter of time (400 years apparently) before Norman rule of Sicily collapsed...

Cathedral of Palermo

The Cancerian line

Architectured-out we ambled further downtown, ate absolutely superb gelato - the best of the trip in fact, and wandered, rather cautiously through the streets of La Vucciria. Not the most comfortable of places to walk around actually, even in broad daylight. It's no wonder I guess as I currently read LP's description of the area as "marking the medieval chasm between the rich and poor that existed in Sicily right up until the 1950s", it's infamous street market once being a "heaving den of crime and activity".

A few quick snaps and maybe it's time to head home...

On the mean streets of La Vucciria

Hanging out in the piazza

These streets have definitely seen better days

Even the supermarket's gone

SJ