10 March 2024
– Wild Winds & Wacky Races
Miles
driven today = 49
Total Miles
to date = 2,248
I mentioned
last night that the wind had got up a bit when we returned to the van from our dinner
date.
Well by 2am we had a full scale
howling gale on our hands with 50+ mph gusts rocking the van quite violently
and making peaceful sleep quite impossible.
You would have thought that being parked up tightly against the sea wall
we would have been protected but the winds were coming out of the South and
were therefore slamming into our exposed flank with a broadside assault.
The
situation didn’t really improved markedly until late morning and we really didn’t
fancy getting ourselves tipped over on the autostrada or, worse still, being
flung off a 100 metre high viaduct, so it was midday before we finally made our
way out of Cefalu and pointed our noses towards Palermo.
I used the time to ring my Mum and wish her a
happy Mother’s Day.
She’ll be 96 this
year but she still maintains an interest in where we have been and relates
stories of her own time travelling round Italy when she first came over from
her native New Zealand in 1960.
There were
still some significant gusts to contend with as we drove, one of which was
strong enough to flip in the passenger side wing mirror, giving an already
slightly nervy Lisa a bit of a jolt, but as we approached Palermo we forgot
about the wind and had to concentrate rather more on the outrageous way that the
locals drive around here.
Google Maps
wanted to route us through the City Centre but even on a Sunday I didn’t fancy
that, so I took a rather more circuitous route around the ring road to the
point it was closest to our destination.
Even then lanes appeared and disappeared without reason or warning, and
with cars joining from slip roads without indicating or checking wing mirrors
it really was a rather tense experience.
When we
left the ring road we zigzagged our way through the Northern portion of the
city. At one point we had to make a U
turn left into three lanes of traffic and then immediately turn right so I thought
well, when in Rome, and just basically used our bulk to bully our way into and
across the throng. I’ve witnessed
traffic chaos in places like Mumbai and Hanoi but I’ve never actually driven in
anything like this so I was quite pleased with myself for getting us to our
destination with no apparent damage to the van.
All I have to do now is get back out again in midweek traffic, but that’s
for another day.
Lisa did point out that it was a nice lady in a Ferrari who
gave way to us at one point, probably because she valued her own expensive
paintwork too much. But then I got to
thinking that anybody driving a Ferrari in Palermo has probably got
connections, if you see what I mean, so I’m glad we didn’t get into any sort of
an altercation with her or we might have been sleeping with the fishes.
We are parked up in a large Sosta with the grandiose title
of “Idea Vacanze Di Giuseppe Di Piazza”.
It’s basically a sloping tarmac park up which appears to double as a
motorhome storage and service area but it’s surprisingly quiet and is on the
107 bus route for Palermo city centre.
We’ve already bought ourselves one day travel passes for tomorrow from
the guy on reception.
But we had slightly more mundane things to do before we could concern
ourselves too greatly about what tomorrow may bring.
The dirty washing bag was getting rather full
again and there is a self-service laundry about 15 minutes’ walk away so off we
marched and a little over an hour and €15 later we are back up to a full
compliment of clean clothes tucked away in our lockers again.
The sosta sits at the foot of Monte Pellegrino, a huge chunk
of rock which overlooks Palermo with the Santuario of Santa Rosalia perched on
the top.
I never considered walking all
the way up there but it’s a relatively short clamber up to the first panoramic
viewpoint so I did ponder giving that a go.
But once we got back from the laundry it was
already fast approaching 4pm so we decided it was Beer O’Clock and we should reserve
our energies for exploring the City close up tomorrow rather than expend them
for the benefit of seeing it through the haze from afar.
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