The sun has shone on us the last two days. Yesterday we walked up Monte Pellegrino in our T-shirts while the locals, still wrapped up in hats and coats, watched us incredulously. Near the top of the hill is a shrine to Santa Rosalia, patron saint of Palermo. The story goes that she lived alone in a cave on Mount Pellegrino to better worship God. During the plague of 1624, almost five centuries after her death, she appeared to some of the populous telling them to collect her bones and carry them round the city. This was done, and the plague left Palermo. Since this time she has remained a much-loved and popular saint despite a British geologist in the nineteenth century declaring the bones to be those of a goat. There is a festival in her honour every July, and in September there is a tradition of walking up to her shrine, some people barefoot and others on their knees (this is a cobbled path).
On Saturday we visited visited a superb art nouveau house, Villino Florio, which I found mentioned in the in-flight magazine on the way over. Owned by UNESCO, the building is free to enter. Devastated by fire in 1962, it has now been restored.
To me, the exterior looked Disney-esque, but apparently is in the Italian Liberty style.
The third of our free outings took us back to Monreale Cathedral this morning to see the wonderful mosaics again (a lot of the smaller churches charge a small admission).
This time I was armed with a map of the mosaics so I knew exactly what I was looking at and I was also brave enough to take some photos (not easy as they are so high on the wall).
Tortoise Travel 
I’ve been wondering what you were doing and now I know. It all looks lovely.
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Lovely photos – they really bring your explorations to life. Thank you for sharing!
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