CHRISTMAS IN PALERMO I

We have just returned from three exhausting days in Palermo. We saw friends, shopped, went to museums and concerts, and wandered the streets of the city taking pictures and taking in the sights.
We stayed at Giusy and Lili’s mother’s apartment in the near suburbs and took city buses everything. The first day we had pranzo at Melito and Giusy’s apartment and got to see her house, tree, and presepe. Then the next day we went to the other Giusy and Franco’s apartment for dinner and later got together with the Giusy-Melito whole family to see a concert of traditional Sicilian folk songs with traditional instruments in the gorgeous church if Saint Carmine in one of the poorest sections of Palermo, the Ballaro market section. And last night we got together with Angelo and Francesca and their friends and family for an exhausting dinner for twelve at a pizza restaurant that overlooked the city of Palermo. It was a spectacular view at night.
By day we saw incredible archeological treasures at the A. Salinas regional archeological museum. The Greek and Roman ruins from Selinunte and Segesta in our area, as well as Gela, Himera, Solunto, Tindari, and various other smaller excavation sites, were fascinating. I always tell people there are better Greek ruins in Sicily than in Greece, and now that we have seen the major museums, I would say that the treasures removed from them are just as amazing. We also got to see several short classical concerts daytime concerts with school children in the Teatro Massimo, which can be seen in the last scene of The Godfather 3. What an amazing venue!
Here then some scenes from the last three days.