Palermo On Our Own, Before The Tour

We arrived back at our hotel to officially check in, after our exploring and having lunch; as our room was now ready.

The outside of our hotel, Best Western Ai Cavalieri Via Sant'Oliva 8, Palermo.

We did a bit of unpacking, and took a mini nap.  You'll notice 2 twin beds.  This is quite common in Europe, and we found out in our other travels it's best to request 2 twins for your room, otherwise you're likely to have only a double bed.  They don't tend to do Queen or King beds in many hotels in Europe, particularly not at the more historic hotels which is often where you stay when touring.

We had nice little sitting area with a little half wall that separated the bedroom from the sitting area, and the door you see is to the bathroom.

Small shower, but adequate.

You can see the half wall I mentioned.  We have a desk area with the TV (that was never turned on!!).  A nice wardrobe.  The room was small, but well appointed and we had coffee service there in the room on the desk with a small fridge in the cabinet.

This is the breakfast room, which was quite pretty.  There was a meeting room just off to the right which is where we met our tour companions and tour guide.

The common areas in the hotel were quite pretty; though I never really noticed anyone sitting and enjoying them.  Would have been nice to have a drink in one of these areas in the evening to chat with our fellow travelers, but the hotel did not have a bar.......I thought that odd.  AND the breakfast room is used for just that, no other meals were served in the hotel.

After our rest, we headed out for a night of exploring and a lite dinner; but that will be the next posts since this post already has 10 photo's.

See you in a few days for next installment of our Sicily tour.

PLEASE leave me a comment when you come visit, so I know you were here. Your visits and comments are very special to me. AND remember, leave your name and url and not your profile link. Name and url takes me right to your blog post so I can reciprocate the visit.

Heading to Sicily!

Heading to Sicily.  The map shows you were we're going, where we're visiting, as well as where we're spending the night.  We fly into Palermo and out of Catania.

We took this 14 day tour through Collette using our Marriott Vacation Club Points (18,000 points).  I've always wanted to go to Sicily.  Can't really even point to a reason why, just because.  lol

Step 1 an overnight stay in the Marriott Cincinnati Airport, where we used some Bonvoy Points for the night and got an upgrade to a suite with 2 bathrooms and living room.  That was very helpful as we could get ready easily for our departure the following day.  We flew out of Cincinnati, instead of home airport, Columbus because the ticket price was better.  This hotel was much nicer than many close to the airports we've stayed in in the past.

Here I am just about to have desert after lunch in the Polaris Lounge in Chicago (Cincinnati to Chicago was our first leg of the trip).  Oh, and some bubbly with desert.  Doesn't the desert look pretty and yummy?

Hubby took my picture just after I settled in my business class seat

And I took his picture as he was getting ready to climb into his cubby.  Every plane we've been on has a slightly different arrangement for business class seats.  Our working parts were in the middle so we were both on the isle, making conversation a bit of a challenge.  We've managed to have seats in the middle with working parts closer to the isle before, which is preferrable, but ....you never know how it's going to work out.  We flew from Chicago to Rome, and even with getting some sleep after dinner on board, we're pretty tired when we arrived 9 hours later in Rome.  Hustled a bit in Rome to make our connections from there to Palermo.

The Collette driver picked us up at the airport (nice small airport in Palermo), and drove us to our hotel about 45 ish minutes away.  The airport is not actually in the city of Palermo.

All totaled, 21 hours of travel.  It was too early to check into our room at the hotel, so they kept our luggage and we ventured out for a walk and lunch.

Lots of choices in small cafe's there in Palermo.  The cutting board is shaped like Sicily!  Lunch was excellent, but we couldn't finish it all.

Yes, hubby looks a bit tired.  My first Aperol Spritz of the trip.

Fresh Mozzarella and a basket of bread in addition to our wonderful charcuterie board.

The name of our cafe'.

Please check back in as we settle into our hotel for 3 nights.  The tour was there for 2 nights, but we arrived a day early so spent 3 nights there.

PLEASE leave me a comment when you come visit, so I know you were here. Your visits and comments are very special to me. AND remember, leave your name and url and not your profile link. Name and url takes me right to your blog post so I can reciprocate the visit and comments.