Weekend Trip #2: Soriano and Sicily

Soriano nel Cimino, about an hour and a half
bus ride from Rome

This weekend we took our second longer trip. First, half the API group went to Soriano nel Cimino, a small medieval town  for the day on Friday. There was a sword fighting troupe whose "performances" (synchronized sword fighting, fights, towers of people, and marching band) are based on the town's ancient traditions.
The town was located up a mountain, and it was the chilliest I've been since I got to Italy. It was a overcast all day, although it only actually rained for a few minutes. (Actually, it began raining right when a prisoner was killed in a reenactment. The timing couldn't have been better-it was just like a movie.)

The human tower the swordsmen made

First we walked up the mountain to see the area that they originally had to survey and pretended we were searching for a place to set up camp. While we were looking at our leader, Davide's, new campsite, he got attacked by another swordsman! They killed the intruder, but still thought it was best that we all learn how to sword fight just in case.
We began with wooden sticks and learned a few moves to attack people, block attacks, and slit peoples' throats. Then we were quizzed on our moves by the swordsmen. When we passed, a few of us were handed real swords (slightly scarier) and practiced our coordinated moves with those. Once we had earned our certificates in sword fighting (literal pieces of paper), we had a four course lunch in a little restaurant in the town, complete with bread, pasta, meat appetizers, red wine and sparkling white wine, and a delicious kind of shortbread dessert.

A view through a little alley of the town

Then we took the bus back to the actual town, which was located on a steep hill, allowing for lots of vertical staircases, hills, windy streets, and little alleys. We walked up to a castle, which was partially renovated; still not much of it was able to be seen. Here, we were greeted by a jester, who revealed that she was a ghost that haunted the castle and then gave us a little tour. We saw a prisoner get killed (that's when it rained), as well as some other slightly confusing skits. Then the swordsmen came back and performed for us. It was fun to watch the synchronized fighting in their matching outfits. They also did series of rolls and jumps over each other, and formed a human tower. [They seemed a little out of practice--it's their off season. They usually perform during the chestnut festival time, but they did this one just for us. Consequently, they kept injuring themselves. One littler boy accidentally slammed his head on the stone ground. One guy had a welt near his eye from getting hit with a sword. Needless to say, by the time the human tower came around I was pretty nervous for their lives.] They were accompanied by a marching band, who greeted us right when we got out of the bus and then continued to follow us around to get us in the medieval mood.

Palermo, Sicily, about a 45 minute flight from Rome

We took the bus back to Rome, then Taylor, Kaitlyn, Meg and I jumped right in a taxi to go to the airport to fly to Sicilia. This was my first flight within the EU. And it was crazy. It was a small plane and there were no assigned seats. That means it was a complete free-for-all getting on. Then, while we were flying, the other passengers had no problems leaning completely on to me in order to look out the window (I was in the middle). The turbulence was terrible because of the rain and lightening, and people were literally screaming and gasping every time we hit a rough patch. It was probably the choppiest flight I've ever been on. Once we landed, everyone exhaled like they had just personally flown across the ocean. Once they announced that we had arrived, everyone clapped and cheered. It was kind of fun to be so encouraging of the pilot, but kind of scary that everyone was so glad we had landed..maybe I take landing alive from a flight for granted!

Storm clouds

It was pouring rain when we left the airport and waited for a taxi and arrived at our "hotel" (I use the word lightly). Before we arrived, the "hotel owner" had been texting me, asking me when I thought we would arrive because there wasn't always someone there to check us in. We were late because we hadn't anticipated waiting for a taxi for so long, and he reprimanded us for that (I will give him a break though..he was waiting in the rain for us in the middle of the night). When we got inside, it looked nice enough. He told us we had to be out by 11 on Sunday ("What time?" "Eleven."), that we had to take our trash out. Then he handed us our bedsheets, snapped a picture of Taylor's passport with his camera phone, and left us. We asked him where our breakfast was, because we had paid extra for it already, and he said, "Oh, you wanted breakfast? I'll bring you something in the morning, but remember that this is a budget hotel so it won't be much." We opened our cabinets and saw the cockroaches then went to bed.

Santa Rosalia church. The chapel walls
literally came out of the cave walls. It
was really pretty!

The next morning we got up, killed a few more roaches, and left before our breakfast arrived. Due to lack of planning, it took us basically all morning and part of the afternoon to go up to Santa Rosalia's cave on the top of a mountain. [We had to wait at the bus stop for a few hours..we ended up being there so long and asking the men at the information desk so many questions that they ended up literally walking us onto the bus. It seems there were only four drivers in the whole city because they all knew where we were going, and continually pushed us off busses and onto other busses. We literally had no choice in where we were going. This being said, the men here were all SO friendly. Everywhere we went old guys were passing each other on the streets and waving. They all knew each other and they were all so excited to help us. I heard we would have to be super wary of pick-pocketers and the mafia, but we didn't encounter this at all.] It was part chapel and part cave which was really beautiful. She's Taylor's adopted saint, so it meant a lot to her to get to see it. Due to more lack of planning, we had to wait forever for a bus back down the mountain.

The Capuchin Catacombs

Then we began our poorly planned trip to the Capuchin Catacombs. [At first, only the Capuchin friars were buried in these catacombs. It was an experiment to see how well they could preserve bodies. Eventually, other people began paying to be buried there. There were a few different preservation methods. The most preserved body was a little girl who was injected with certain chemicals. The method died when that scientist died, however, and nobody's sure how he did it. Other were dehydrated on racks then cleaned with vinegar, dressed in clothes of the time period, then placed up against the walls of the catacombs. There's a section of monks, a section of women, a section of children, and a section of professionals.] Some were really well preserved with skin and hair still. Others were mostly just bones and clothing. Either way, they were all really creepy. We finally made it back to the "hotel," then went out to dinner. I tried some seafood pasta, and ate my first muscles and clams. I strongly disliked them, but what better place to try them than in Sicilia? We got some dessert, walked around a little bit, then went to bed.

The group I went with near
the ocean

On Sunday, we got up early to find the market, but it appeared to be closed. So we got some spremuta d'arance (freshly squeezed orange juice) and headed back to check out of our hotel. We were literally kicked out at 11:07, so good thing we were ready to go.

Il Cattedrale di Palermo

Even though it was overcast and windy, it made for a beautifully dramatic day near the beach. After spending some time there, we made our way to the duomo, Il cattedrale di Palermo. Then we wandered for a while with our luggage before accepting a taxi tour in a little tour guide rickshaw. The tour guide was really fun because he played us fun Italian music and blared it for us and danced with us. He forced us to get out at all the monuments to take pictures and drove us past some of his friends. He also let us stop at our favorite cafe to get some snacks. Eventually, we ran out of things to do in Palermo, so we went to the airport a little early and waited for our flight.
Although we got to know Palermo pretty well, I'd love to go back to Sicily sometime to see the rest of the island!