Palermo, Sicily: Kebabs, a horrible hotel, and a really expensive glass of wine

Wednesday was a long hard day! One of those days that makes you wish you could snap your fingers and be back home. We awoke early in the morning eager to leave Siracusa behind and ready to try our luck in Palermo. I had read a decent amount about Palermo and we had opted to stay there for three nights and were at this point hoping it was not a huge mistake! Because we both refused to have a train "lay over" in Catania after Monday's incident there, we were forced to change trains back in Messina and therefore were looking at about 8+ hours on a train. Yikes! We were glad we had made this decision after we pulled into Catania and saw that all the stray dogs that had attacked Reed and Ollie on Monday were barking at the people getting off of our train and running along the platform. That would not have been fun!

The train ride from Messina was long and slow. There were some pretty views of the Aeolian Islands off of Sicily's northern shores. Besides that, it was pretty much one small unimpressive town after another. Like I said, we had pretty much had our full of Sicily by this time!

We arrived in Palermo around 4:30 pm with high hopes off enjoying the rest of our time in Sicily. We had already decided that we would take a cab to our hotel/B&B, Arte Palermo. I had read some reviews of the B&B and one of the reasons we chose it, besides the fact that they allow dogs, is that the B&B claims to have a kitchen that the guests share. We were eager to head to Palermo's markets and were looking forward to spending some time in the kitchen. This is far from the truth. This hotel is horrible! It made such an impression that we wrote a review that is posted on Trip Advisor here.

Question: Would you be happy if this is what greeted you after 8 hours on a train?????




Answer: Probably NOT!

Anyway, the cab pulls up to a very small side street that was basically an ally. We get out, and all I can think about is the smell: the ally was covered in dog crap and smelled of that and urine.

I thought that there must be some mistake! The entrance to the hotel was shabby and a used pizza box was the "welcoming mat." We hiked up to the top floor to find our hotel. We were greeted to the owner who was fairly unwelcoming. Within the first few minutes she had totally turned us off to her and her "hotel." Not only was her dog unfriendly and mean, this "hotel" was her home. We were to share the bathroom and the "kitchen" with her and her Tunisian husband, who we only saw in his bathrobe. People have better "kitchens" when they camp then what we had. And the bathroom.....was a tub with no curtain or anything. The owner made us sit through a long explanation of what there was to see and do in Palermo even though we were exhausted from 8+ hours on a train. She also told us in great depth of how mean the street dogs were here and how it was best for us to carry a stick for defense as she was frequently attacked while walking her dog! Very nice of her to mention all this when I made the reservations.

At this point, the disappointment over the hotel room and the general fear of taking Ollie outside, made it blatantly clear to us that we had to get out of here! We had ferry tickets and a cabin reserved for Saturday night's ferry from Palermo to Naples and we decided to walk down to the ferry and try to change the tickets to tomorrow (Thursday) night. Luckily, for a fee of less than 1 Euro, we were able to change our ticket! Yes!! We planned on using Thursday day to see the highlights of Palermo before our ferry left at 8:30 pm.

On the way back to get something to eat, we stopped into a bar to grab a glass of house wine, which normally costs around 2-4 Euros. The guy proceeds to pour the whole bottle into 2 glasses and then charge us 20 Euros. At this point we were exhausted and probably should have just left or not paid but the guy was freaky, seemed high on something, and we had already had enough bad luck in Sicily. This was just one more reason on our "Do Not Return" List.

The only highlight of our night was a really good dinner of Kebabs at a Tunisian restaurant in the old part of Palermo. We were able to sit outside and enjoy good food and surroundings that reminded me a lot of the old part of Athens. Best of all, our meal was really cheap!!

Over dinner we debated saying something at the hotel about leaving early but I eventually convinced Reed against doing it, figuring it would somehow come back to haunt us if we did. Plus, we felt we had been mislead by the owners of the "hotel" so it was our turn to do some misleading of our own.

Tomorrow we make the most of our day in Palermo and see the sights including the markets, a church without a roof, and the cathedral. We also squeeze in some time to eat a cannoli!