Our morning began with a walk to the center of town by the Opera House to meet our guide Simone. She led us through different markets of Palermo and introduced us to street food along the way.

First the fish and produce market: Via Volturno where the locals shop early in the morning to get their fresh food for the day. Our stop here was for fried food: Arancino, a little potato and then olives.  The vendors “package” what you purchase in a paper cone, and if you are not a regular known customer, you will find less desirable items at the bottom of the cone! Fried food and beer go well together! 

Next treat: focaccia with a sweet marsala wine! Delish and already too much food. Then our walk took us to another bar with a little snack that was bacon wrapped around green onion and then grilled. This with more beer or lemonade. Along the way we stopped to see a lovely church tucked into the middle of the market. The style was baroque rococo, and all the decorations in the church are inlaid marble pieces! Quite intricate, beautiful and unexpected in this area.

We walked through the fabric market and arrived at the spot for the special vendor who makes the “Pani ca Miavusa” : a special sandwich of cow spleen and lung, cooked in lard and served on a bun. Check the photo! It’s sort of like a French Dip with out the dip. The meat is sprinkled with salt and lemon when they put it on the bun. Not bad (truly) … just a bit too much bread!

We ended up at the gelateria: what could be bad?!! Dark chocolate and lemon and 31 flavors!!   

Late afternoon was a delightful puppet show with an introduction about the puppets and the family that has been doing this for 4 generations.

Evening: a Michelin restaurant that Robbie picked up on from a Stanley Tucci TV show about Sicily. The dinner was magnificent! We had the 5-course tasting menu (which was more like 7 courses!) ... loved it all. The explanations were too complicated to post!

Just, rest assured, we had a terrific evening!!