readersdigest.co.in 105snaking down their slim backs stand
about imperiously. The boys hold
themselves more shyly, infinitely
younger-seeming.
In Sicily, says Luca, the girls are a
nightmare. “Mio dio,” he sighs, “the
bowing and scraping required, the
declarations of eternal love—really
they think they smell like paradise,
it’s just ridiculous.” I console him with
ice cream flavoured a tooth-raspingly
sweet double-caramel nougat.
“Better than Naples?” Luca chal-
lenges. I nod. “Let them have their
pizzas,” he mutters.I
ce cream is worshipped in Pal-
ermo, where many claim it was in-
vented. In betting shops, hardened
gamblers stand in front of TV screens
with eyes screwed up in anxiety, lick-
ing frantically on a cone. In café after
café, businessmen thrash out deals
over hilariously fluted, whipped-
creamed nostra coppas. At Ilardo,
moments from the Piazza Santo
Spirito, or at La Preferita further into
town, mothers and daughters lean
against walls silently eating brioche
buns filled with mint choc chip.
After such a cold binge, the warm
glow of Palermo’s stone hits the eye
anew. The city was once known as
the granary of ancient Rome—wheat
was grown in vast estates outside the
walls—and it’s as though the shim-
mering crop long ago cast the whole
place a golden yellow.There is nothing for it but to walk as
far as your limp will take you, through
the Piazza Magione with its lushly
flowered cloister tucked into one
corner, and marvel at how in the
middle of this crammed city you can
suddenly feel as though you are in
some remote Persian village. Then
out on to busy Via Guiseppe Gari-
baldi, past the cabinetmakers’ work-
shops and garages, faded palaces, and
emporiums piled with panamas and
trilbies (how Palermo adores a hat).
Only here and in Rajasthan have I
seen shops entirely devoted to men-
ding the wheels on suitcases or the
rope soles on canvas shoes.
Palermo pulls you along with smells
of roasting coffee and rotting boxes
of oleanders. Street football games
divide to let you pass, and housewives
lower baskets from their high apart-
ments down to fishmongers, sarcas-
tically haggling five storeys up into
the windless air.
This is the world’s best city to be
lost in, the best place to be aimless.
Sooner or later you’ll find a main
street, or recognize the man who sells
dried persimmons or the museum
with the wall painting by the Inqui-
sition-tormented sailor accused of
romancing a mermaid.
This is a city that becomes familiar
far faster than others, and with such
a weirdly vivid intimacy it’s as though
you had been here before, and each
step and turn is already a memory.
antonia quirke/condé nast traveller. © 2014 by condé nast publications ltd.Travel