Palermo

Palermo is the largest town on the Italian island of Sicily.  It is, quite frankly, large, busy, slightly run-down and not really the most fascinating place in the world, regardless of the boasts of the local tourist authorities.

A word of warning.  In Palermo, there is an open-topped hop-on hop-off tourist bus with taped commentary, that purports to show you the highlights of the city and should run every 30 minutes.  In practice, half way through the day (probably when they had got everybody's money) it seemed to stop running.  At the port there was a crowd of people (including ourselves) complaining in several different languages that they had been waiting for over an hour for a bus that didn't turn up.  The bus companies representatives totally ignored them.  As a result, this bus is not recommended, and we all felt quite ripped off by the experience.  So that you can choose to avoid it should you wish, the company is called City Sightseeing Palermo.

The architecture, buildings and statues of Palermo.

Palermo has a large cathedral, which is worth a visit.

Palermo also has some interesting fountains hidden off the main streets in the piazza.