Day 8, Palermo and Monreale

The Cathedral of Palermo. 

The Cathedral of Palermo, built in Norman style.

The Monreale Cathedral in the town of Monreale.

Every inch of the Monreale Cathedral's interior is covered with mosaics.

Each mosaic panel is associated with an episode from the Old Testament.

Laura explained the Old Testament story associated with every mosaic panel to us.

The bronze door of Monreale Cathedral.
This door does not open for tourists, but there was going to be a wedding shortly (at 11am)
so the door was swung open, to get ready for the wedding party.

Many tourists seized this opportunity to exit the cathedral through its bronze door.

A flower girl from the wedding party arrived.

The bride and her escort entered the cathedral.

Outside the Monreale Cathedral a boy enjoyed a carriage ride.

On the way down to parking lot. The lemon granita (lemon ice)
from this stand was very good!

Palermo's Teatro Massimo, where Maurizio arranged for us to take a tour inside.

Giuseppe Verdi's statue adorns the theater.

The young lady did an excellent job guiding us throughout this splendid theater.
There are many beautiful and unique features. Unfortunately no camera is allowed inside.

After the theater tour we gave Maurizio a round of applause for making this possible.

It was time to find lunch. The four of us decided to following Lonely Planet's guide to
eat at its #1 pick - Foccaceria del Massimo, just across from the Teatro Massimo.
Forccacerie are traditional workmen's eateries.

We know Forccacerie has its own system of choosing and ordering, but
since there was no one behind the counter, we had no idea how to place order.

Choices of antipasta - finally some one came to our rescue ...

We managed to order a plate of this by pointing, but did not know what kind of meat it was.

Daily specials are listed on the board (in Italian only). 

An arancini was less than 2 euro; a plate of flavorful daily pasta was only 2 Euro.
They fried arancini only after customers placed order, so the arancini was piping hot and very good.

We had a tasty and inexpensive lunch. The total bill for the four of us came to 20 Euro.

Maurizio advised against us visiting Vucciria market (although recommended by Lonely Planet),
saying Vucciria market is in decline, and that area is not safe for tourists.
He suggested us to go to Capo market instead, just behind Teatro Massimo.
Here in Capo market Mei-Ching bought a bag of oregano leaves for 1 Euro.