Sunday - a day on which you are never sure what you might find open in different cities and towns in Italy. Two major objective sources today - a longer visit to the Duomo (this time for Mass) and a puppet show which we had discovered in our wanderings. Having discovered the free bus, we headed off for the 11 am Mass. when we got into the church at 1150, the previous mass was still wrapping up. It looks like it was a special children's mass, with parents in full...

Our Palermo palace is the only one with one we have booked during this trip with one of those mezzanine bedrooms that takes advantage of the high antique ceilings in the buildings, placing our bed directly under the wood beams of the ceiling. Overnight the rain continued. We discovered that the roof had a minor leak when Mick stepped into a small puddle on the floor at about four am. The drips missed our bed by about 5 centimetres- very lucky. All we needed wa...

The day was spent mainly in the train. We managed the trip by metro and through the labyrinth of Napoli Centrale, found our train and our carriage and settled in for the long haul. The 10 carriage train which went south to The port of San Giovanni, , onto the ferry ( a first for us! ) in two halves. arriages 1-5 continued to Catania while carriages 6-10 headed off in the other direction to Palermo. Contrary to information there was no wifi or food on the train....

We had a slow start to the day - no early opening hours to meet - and made a few phone calls home. We knew that Naples is the place for pizza, and the Antica Pizzeria da Michele is reputed to be the best in Naples- high praise. All the reviews just speak of queue and long waits. Our plan was to get there soon after it opened at 11 to beat the crowds. The plan succeeded. The shopfront is so unassuming we walked past first time. Inside, plain marble top tables, s...

Pompeii and Herculaneum These two places are easy to visit together because they are along the same train line. The first hurdle was to discover where in the main Napoli station we could find our train tickets on the separate Circumvesuviana line for Pompeii/ Herculaneum, and then the train tickets for our trip from Napoli to Palermo on Friday. The first was accomplished amid the din of a rather physical argument with some men nearby. We think the railway polic...