Week commencing Monday, 16 October 2023
Quantified Self
- This week: Stand 6/7; Exercise 5/7 and Move 7/7. (86%, feeling happy). No office days as I am on vacation. Total steps: 108,762
Life
- Monday, awoke in Palermo: walking tour; beautiful churches. Fountain of Shame. Arancini, pomegranate granita and panelle were all tasty.
- Holiday Apple Maps: Quattro Canti (passed); Orto Botanico di Palermo (failed, took us to the wrong part of town for the entrance); Famila supermarket (failed on generic search, passed when we worked out the name); Le Catacombe dei Cappuccini (passed); Maxim Theatre (failed when we tried to use Opera House as the look-up); Fud Bocs (passed); Hotel Politeama (passed) but it failed the Fountain of Shame as it needed the official name, Fontana Pretoria, which nobody uses.
- Saw a snake in the botanical gardens. That wasn’t what was biting and I got off better than the others who suffered more.
- First train sold out to Cefalù; we went on the later one. Nice lunch near the sea. Squeezed into a bar, with a view, for an over-priced limoncello spritz, which was new to me (the drink not the pricing).
- Thursday, No Mafia Memorial and, then contrasting, a department store rooftop bar in the shade as it was 32°. Then, up a level for the unshaded fabulous view. Then, down a level, where it was Christmas!
- Friday, tour of the third biggest theatre in Europe. The view from the royal box is as impressive as you’d expect to give dignitaries. Later the wind got up on the terrace – the weather warning coming true – and we had to remove anything that would blow away. It calmed enough for us to eat there.
- The temple at Segesta was unfinished, impressive and you could see the bosses on the blocks of the base (used for lifting the stones into place but usually removed when finishing).
- Erice is up a winding mountainside road. Our driver was great. That they built a town there is impressive.
- Lunch with our guide and the Chilean couple was great (couscous with fish for me). I was schooled on the linguistic definition of a dialect.
- The cannoli was enormous (and messy). The salt pans on the way back less impressive.
- The restaurant we planned to go to was booked on a Friday night. So, our last Italian dinner was delicious but the most expensive.
Media
- Does the goat cheese supplier drown himself in one of his own pasteurisation tanks? No spoilers, but I finished Ian Moore’s Death and Fromage.
- Paul Gambaccini, talking to Steve Wright, looks back on his 50 years on UK radio. Legend.
Archive
To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here. If the source above no longer works, these should.
- Panorama: Rinascente Rooftop
- Third biggest theatre in Europe: Teatro Massimo
- This amazingly preserved Doric temple was abandoned before it was ever completed: Temple of Segesta
- The Paul Gambaccini Collection: 50 Years of Paul Gambaccini