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New Year 2007 and a little trip to Palermo in Sicily, via Ryanair, for a few days. Very nice hotel, just opposite the prison in Palermo, in fact called by the same name - Ucciardhome. But it was a very nice hotel, newly renovated and no doubt offering better accommodation than the other place by the same name. Palermo is both very grand and very down at heel, and the two parts can lie within a street or so of each other. It was badly bombed during the 2nd WW and it is said that some of the ruined sites are still undeveloped to this day because the Mafia took all the money. The weather was fine, only in the early morning and evening did you need a light coat, although the Palermitani were all wrapped up in their winter coats. Eating out was not the highlight of the few days, not so much because the food wasn’t good, but rather we seemed to find it hard to come across places that were open. Maybe that was because it was still holiday time for them. A trip to the Grecian temples at Agrigento was a memorable trip of the few days, taking the train from Palermo south across the island to see the really spectacular Grecian temples. The Greeks are only one of the influences on the island, along with the Pheonecians, the Arabs, and the Normans who all came to stay at one time or another. Another highlight was a trip to the Opera to see Puccini’s Tosca, with the bill almost eclipsed by the alternative but parallel show put on by the opera goers themselves - lots of fur coats, blue rinses, cashmere overcoats slung nonchalantly across shoulders and, of course, the incessant talking throughout, with others trying to hush them up. And then at the end, in this production Tosca does not fling herself off the Castel Sant’Angelo in to the Tiber but shoots herself with a pistol she snatches from a guard - much to the horror and disgust of the audience who let their feelings be known about this departure from the original story ! But great fun.