Palermo, Sicily

[aamechs2]

We just returned from a cruise that had Palermo as one of the stops. We considered renting a car here but because it was our first time, we decided to take the buses and visit a few places, Catacombe dei Cappuccini and Monreale along with walking to a few Piazza's. As we left the ship, there were alot of VERY agressive taxi drivers. As well as horse and carriage drivers. It was pretty overwhelming (much like Athens is as far as aggressive) I just kept walking repeating "no grazie" This seemed to work pretty well. As we got a little further though, my husband started talking to one driver. He told him where we wanted to go and the driver wanted E70. I was fine with taking the bus but when he offered to take us around for E65, we agreed. He was driving a large van, we could've had 8 in it easily. First he took us to a couple of beautiful piazza's, the one with the "fountain of shame" and 1 other. Then to a beautiful old church and next to the theatre. At 9:00 am, we made our way to the Catacombes. My son and hubby went in (later they said that it was too weird for them and pretty gross) while my daughter and I found a lovely cafe with wifi and wonderful coffee and croissants. Soon the driver came to find us and we started to head out. But he was saying Montebello. I said "No Monreale", he repeated himself so I told everyone to get out of the taxi that we'd take a bus. At that point he said "OK Monreale" sigh, I hate stuff like that.

 

He took us to Monreale, though the first way, the road was closed. He dropped us off right at the front and we went in. IT was magnificent!! We wandered around and then paid to go up to a bell tower or something. Beautiful views from there. We spent about 1 1/2 hours here. As we left, our driver took us to an overlook for a family picture (after we insisted on Monreale, he was very nice, didn't seem to be mad or anything) We asked to be dropped off a few blocks from the ship by some cafes (first he took us past a few more piazza's and a big banyan tree. Though we were ready to do some walking, we enjoyed the tour) As we went to pay him E75, he started saying "no not enough and talking about Montebello vs Monreale. It was hard to understand exactly what he was saying as his english wasn't good. We just gave him the money and wandered off and he left. We then found some cafe's on a tree lined pedestrian area where we had calzones and pizza plus a bottle of water and free wifi! All for E16. They did not charge us extra to sit and enjoy ourselves which was wonderful.

 

After we got back on the ship, we talked to a number of people who didn't even walk around Palermo because of the "gauntlet" I'm writing this in hopes that future cruisers will ignore it or negotiate for their price and go see Palermo. It is a beautiful city (with a kind of rundown air but still such gorgeous buildings) And BTW wait and buy souvenirs near the ship, cheap prices and some cool stuff.

[atlast95]

I really appreciate info like this so thanks for passing along your experience. Timely and pertinent details as I am just in the process of planning our own shore excursion in September for Palermo.

[helpthejuggler]

Heading to Palermo in November. Thanks for your helpful post.

[CoralReef]

Glad you stuck to your guns and insisted on Monreale! The mosaics are amazing. We recently visited Ravenna, and although the famous mosaics there are older, we thought Monreale was more beautiful.

[Three hills]

We were in Palermo a month ago, and I can confirm the aggressiveness of the taxi drivers. We got out of the ship early since we wanted to catch a 9AM train. The quay was full of taxis but nobody wanted to work (I think it was their early coffee morning hour). We only wanted a ride to the train station. When we found some taxi drivers that seemed to be willing to start the day all they wanted was to take us for the day and I refused. We kept walking out of the port and finally found a taxi driver outside and accepted to take us to the train station for Euro 15. We took an hour train ride to Cefalu, it’s a quaint seaside town. Some people call it Little Venice. There’s the beach but when we got there it started to rain. There’s several antique and souvenir shops lining the narrow streets and the Cathedral is further walk up town.