Our eighth landing on the Saga Eastern Mediterranean Cruise was to Palermo in Sicily. It was the only landing over the two Saga cruises that I've surveyed on, that I think could have been dropped without any major loss. Looking at options for Palermo the evening before, there wasn't anything that jumped out as a fun option. We considered borrowing the electric bikes to get out of town to some of the surrounding countryside. But having visited Naples and the Pisa area back in 1983, I hadn't been impressed with the quality of the driving, especially from youths on mopeds. In the end, we dropped that idea, as it would have been a fairly long trip on local roads.
With Plan A cancelled, Plan B was to walk into the city. The places of interest in the city were either tours of churches or mafia-themed tours, neither of which appealed. So, we settled for the bizarre Palermo Capuchin Catacombs. These date back to 1597, when the Capuchin friary extended their burial ground into underground caves. The early monks that were laid to rest ended up being naturally mummified. After that, it became popular for the monks to continue the practice, with natural or deliberate mummification. Eventually, it was so popular that the bodies of members of the public were also allowed in, if they could afford to donate to the friary, until burials were stopped after 1880. It is now the largest collection of mummified bodies in the world. We weren't allowed to take photos inside, but in reality, it's a bit too macabre to want to photograph anyway. After fifteen minutes inside, I was glad to be heading out.
The main centre of the city was very squashed in, but with some scenic buildings. However, as we got closer to the catacombs, we were in more residential areas. What really stood out was the amount of rubbish left lying on the streets. It was a real contrast to all the other landings we had seen. Any reasonable sized-street contained as much discarded litter, as I had seen on some of the other landings in a half day of walking around them. One of the passengers asked a shop keeper about why he didn't try to keep the area outside his shop clean and he just didn't care.
It had been a good opportunity to stretch the legs and we walked for six miles around the city. However, I think in hindsight, I should have paid to get on one of the Saga bus tours outside of the city, it would almost certainly have been more interesting. It was the only landing that we were back for lunch in the main restaurant.
It was dark by the time we were heading out to sea. The plan was to head South for Tunis the following morning. I was excited when I looked at options in Tunis, as the modern city is near to the ancient city of Carthage. This was somewhere I had long thought would be interesting to visit, but never thought I would get to see.