And now for something completely different 😳

riverrangere
Jan 9, 2022
2 min read

A new year and a new continent

Jan 1, 2022 we fly to Palermo, Sicily -

to supposedly meet the sailing vessel Lola & sail to Greece for some training… That has now all been changed due to weather, and now we await Lothar’s emails, while enjoying Italy’s sites and fares. Palermo is a ancient sprawling city, surrounded by mountains. The soil Is rich and sea plentiful, and so there was wealth to build grand monuments, palaces, and churches. Hey, we love a good tourist town, especially one thats very reasonably priced😜. We spent the week walking the streets, hills, and gardens, and even rented a car to visit the other side of the island. In total we walked 62.2 miles in the week — Yikes, no wonder my feet ache.

The decision to fly to the Mediterranean and hop on a sailboat wasn’t a hard decision to make. We did have trouble deciding how long to stay on either side of the training trip. And with the weather delay, we will have to be flexible and patient. The plan now will be to fly to Malaga, Spain to catch the boat, and possibly take it all the way to Lefkas, Greece… That may change our plans on the backside a bit (like miss out on 10 days in Greece and Athens) but sailing about the northern coast of the Med might make up for it 😜.

Ok, here are the photos you’ve been waiting for, and I’ll stop making you all jealous now…

Our wonderings about Palermo

This is the land of almonds, olives, oranges and pomegranate - no wonder why they worshipped so many gods…

We had to wait until sunset and beyond for photos (Tricia would be disappointed with us if we didn’t!).

I will say that Sicily is taking the pandemic seriously - we have to show our “Green Pass” (our vaccine cards) to get into any building, even restaurants… there is a mandatory mask policy for anywhere outside and a FFP2 (N95) mask mandate for anywhere inside. We had to have a Covid test before we arrived, and we’re supposed to have one when we arrived (let’s just say the last policy has a lot to learn if they are targeting tourists).