Day 12 - Palermo, Sicily

After getting off the ferry, we went to an Italian bar for breakfast. The pastries, the breads, they are SO delicious. By now I'm thinking coffee back in the states will taste extremely weak. Another plus with Italian coffee, they serve warm milk to go with it. Delicious!

We finished our breakfast and were joined by our wonderful guide...Jucy...Juzy...not sure. (Ok, this is much later and I just heard from Michelle! Her name is Giusi! Thank you, Michelle!) She could talk SO FAST and she obviously LOVED telling us all about the sites. I think everyone thoroughly enjoyed her. Our first stop was a little town, Monreale. It has a population of about 28,000 and is on the outskirts of Palermo. We went into an absolutely gorgeous church. Chad said he would never look at his own church the same again. You cannot imagine all the mosaic work. There were no lights on in the church and if you wanted light on an area, you had to put in some money. I guess they paid their electric bill that way? Chad, hopefully, got some great photos....even with a little light, mine didn't come out great. Here's a mosaic of Jesus over the altar. Fruit, vegetable, and also fish stands were on many streets. As we left Monreale, we headed into Palermo (through the city gate) - which was once regarded as the greatest and most beautiful city in Europe! I can't remember the name of this church, but Giusi had our bus driver stop just so we could get out and take pictures of it! If any of you remember the name, please let me know. Plus, this tree...think it's called a banyan tree???...is another time Giusi had the bus driver pull over just so we could get out and take a picture. Like I said, Giusi obviously loved what she did!

For lunch, we went to a pizzeria where we each made our own pizza. It took a long time - like 3 hours! - because 8 of us would make our pizzas, then 8 more would make theirs while the first 8 cooked...in a brick oven. Our chefs name was Paolo! (Thank you again to Michelle for that name!)
Richele and Sharleen make their pizzas...and here is one of the chefs.

From the pizzeria, we went to an educational meeting with an Italian "professore" to hear some of the similarities and differences between the Italian and American educational systems. One of the biggest differences I could tell was the amount of testing. The Italians have more, although he said most kids always pass??? As a teacher that makes me think - well, are the tests easy or do they prime the kids for the tests? Another difference is their school day which on average runs from 8:45 - 1:30. Would that be from unairconditioned schools and intense heat? I don't think he said.

Dinner came too soon since most of us were still full from the pizza. Our hotel was the Jolly Hotel Palermo which had a really nice pool, so free time at the hotel was refreshing at the end of Day 12.