Palermo

It’s the light that hits you first. Three hours from London and it feels a million miles away. On the train from the airport to the city centre we passed trees adorned with oranges, looking like Christmas trees decorated with lights. With all this you expect warmth, but the air is cool and I am glad of my winter coat.

Our apartment is old and has been well renovated. The rooms have high, domed ceilings and elegant nine-foot high French windows, making the interior airy and bright. The young man who let us in warned us that we may need to use the central heating with the radiators as well as the warm air that blows out of the air conditioning units, and we do.

The streets are scruffy, but only in a Southern European way. The bins where all rubbish goes are not overflowing, as in Rome, and this morning there was a man sweeping the pavement of leaves, which is not something you often see at home these days.

We visited the Palazzo dei Normanni this morning. It dates from before the Norman invasion in 1072, when the island was under Arab rule, but was transformed by the Normans. How one part of France managed to send large enough armies to conquer two areas, at opposite ends of Europe, six years apart, is amazing. The Arabian influence is most evident in the wonderful mosaic work in the Palatine Chapel. Going round we listened to an audio guide which grew to be rather tedious. The explanations were too long and too wordy (The philosophy seems to be, ‘Why say something in six words when you can say it with twelve’).

We thought we’d watch a programme from bbc iPlayer last night, but it seems the BBC have blocked the ability to watch from abroad using a vpn. I would willingly pay for a TV licence to be able to do this, but you can’t. Might have to watch Italian TV.