More exploring Palermo

Alarm 7.30. The light was still on, and the bed next to me unslept in. I went up to breakfast at 8.30 after a nice lie-in. I walked out the door at 9 am and headed to Teatro Massimo for a tour. I stopped in a few clothes shops on the way. At the theatre, despite Melinda’s guide book saying that it was open at 9.30 am, everything was locked, so I asked a nice man at the side whether they did tours. He said yes, and that I needed to go around the front. I tried to go around the inside of the fence, but a nasty man told me to go around the outside. I waited out the front with a lot of other people, and the gates were unlocked at 10 am. I went in with everyone else, and bought my ticket for an English tour for €5. I was told that I wasn’t allowed to take photos. Which meant the best internal photo I had was on the postcard that I’d sent Nik.

While I waited for the tour to start, I spied a poster that told me that the Simon Bolivar youth orchestra of Venezuela had performed there under the baton of one Gustavo Dudamel in November 2006. Nice link. Anyway, the tour started eventually. First, we went into the hall of mirrors, which leads to the main hall. In the main hall, it didn’t look as beautiful as the postcard without all the lights on, but it was still huge and very grand. The technicians on the stage were building the set for Janacek’s House of the Dead. The guide told us that the theatre was built between 1870 and 1890-something. The stage has a slope down towards the audience to aid viewing, and it’s 40 m deep behind the set – for Aida they had real elephants. For a time, it was the third biggest stage in Europe after the Paris opera house and one in Vienna. The seats were red velvet – originally it was to seat over 3000 people, but regulations mean that only 1350 fit now. There are windows under the cupola for ventilation.

From there, we went to see the royal box. Outside it was a beautiful mahogany reception room with original furniture, original Murano glass chandeliers and original silk paintings on the ceiling. Inside the box, we saw the niches at the side that amplify the sound. And then we went into the echo room. It’s perfectly round, with a huge cupola in the middle, and was originally used for smoking, and now for exhibitions. If you stand right in the middle, it has an awesome echo – I even tested it. There were 17 big wooden doors around the outside – some were fake, only put there for the sake of symmetry. These rooms were all duplicated on the opposite side of the theatre too, for the same reason.

Then we saw the carriage entrance at ground level, now used for VIP guests, then we were back in the shop area. I used the toilets and had a look at the posters in the foyer. I went back to the hotel, stopping to try some clothes on that didn’t fit. Stupidly, one top was ridiculously tight around my upper arms. The sizing must be very strange as I was trying on mediums. I left my camera back at the hotel, got my towel, and went back out, stopping to buy a pendant for Ange and being pestered by the guy in the shop to buy something else. I tried to get more cash, because the marcasites really were beautiful, but the machine again wouldn’t cooperate. On the way down Via della Liberta, I bought two pizzas for €1 each, then got the bus to Mondello, getting off further up the beach this time. I had a warm, chilled-out afternoon, eating some pizza, getting some lovely sun, and having a very nice swim. There were a lot of people on the beach, but many of them were fully clothed and just socialising.

When I’d had enough and the sun started to retreat, I walked all the way into Mondello proper, which was nice but slightly tacky. The market stalls had some horrible things there. I couldn’t find a cash machine, so I got the next bus back to Palermo. I found a cash machine back in the city, bought dinner and some Etna Rosso from the supermarket, got gelato (fairly disappointing tiramisu and nougat) and went back to my room. The other person’s things had gone. I laid out my picnic of olives, cheese, prosciutto and crackers, and tucked in, watching some TV and relaxing, and starting to pack up. I went to bed at 11 pm.