Jet Yellow
We continued our stay in London visiting friends. We hooked up with Andrei and Frank for lunch, and spent the afternoon with Andrei having gone all the way to London in a Starbucks, but only because the cafe across the street was closed for renovation. We visited Dave and Madalyn and the nine-month-old Zachary and had takeout food from yet another delicious unique vegetarian Indian place Rasa, this time Kerala cuisine.
Friday morning we returned to the British Museum briefly, where we saw the Rosetta Stone and their African collection, including lots of brass plaques from Benin. An African lady was there with a display of four paperweights and a necklace that you were allowed to touch so that you knew what it felt like to touch antiquities. Then, after a Korean lunch (has anybody ever had English food in London?) it was off to the Stansted Airport where we boarded our Ryanair flight to Palermo. Ryanair is a discount Irish airline, like Southwest, but more so. Some of the additional corners they have cut include not hiring a color psychologist to avoid having themed their interiors in bright yellow and dark blue of a most unattractive hue, removing the pockets on the seat backs, and making the seat backs so they don’t recline, presumably so they can cram a few more in. The first 65 people who show up at the airport get to stand in a special line. We were 158 and 159, got to the front of the “normal” line and ended up with a window seat.
Arriving in Palermo was reasonably stressful. The aiport, like all antiquities in Italy, is under restoration so we had to take shuttles to the various contact points involving passport control and car rental. The signs on the freeway were all in stock table font and had the names of streets other than the ones that the minimal maps we had (copied and pasted from http://www.multimaps.com) were indicating we should look for. But eventually we found Marbela Residence, the delightful little apartment where we’re staying. While walking around Palermo’s cathedrals and churches today, we’ve crossed paths with three weddings, one of which was in progress in a small church as tourists including us milled around and gazed at the historic mosaics. Also the bookstores are filled with students buying books for the new term. Also, the crypt underneath the Palermo cathedral seems to be a collection of sarcophagi from around town and not any place where anybody requested to be buried. In case you were all looking for something to start a collection of.