We left the mountains and headed South for a week visiting Verona where we camped by the canal and walked into town to San Zeno and along the river past the Castelvecchio.
Dinner in the Antica Bottega del Vino with a wine list you can hardly lift up it’s so big.
Along the plains of the River Po (we’ve been reading Tobias Jones on the Po) to Parma with its Baptistery and stone figures of the months of the year with Zodiac signs.
And so to Lucca where we camped outside town, walked in through the fields and wandered until the rains came in. (Alex’s drawing)
We caught the 19 hour ferry from Livorno to Palermo and spent the evening with Sicilian lorry drivers returning to Sicily for Easter weekend singing Italian popsongs along with the karaoke. It was so windy we weren’t allowed out on deck until we arrived at Palermo.
We stopped at lovely Monreale before heading into the hills. They’ve had a scirocco sandstorm from the Sahara and a week later the skies are still full of dust. They don’t usually get the scirocco this early in the year so the farmers are worried about crops and animals. But where we camped up in the olive groves everything was very peaceful (Diana’s drawing).
On Good Friday we went into Pietraperzia for the procession of “lu Signori di li fasci”. They raise an 8 metre high cypress trunk mounted with a shining sphere and above that the figure of Christ. The pole is tied with strips of white linen (each belonging to different families). They carry it through the streets followed by three bands who play sombre music and sway to and fro as they process. The town has a population of 6,500 and they all seemed to be there. We were the only tourists. It was impressive. And then on Easter Sunday the band came out again this time playing jolly tunes and shortly after 12 noon the fire crackers and fireworks started….explosive!
