Sicily--travel to Monreale

 We left Cefalu at 8:30.  Our luggage was placed outside our room, 30 minutes before departure.  It is a 3 hour drive to Mazara del Vallo, but we made a few stops enroute.

Our first stop was in Monreale a small town near Palermo to visit the Duomo.  There were 100 steps up a hill before you arrive at the cathedral.  This is another UNESCO site.  There were many tourists! 

It's difficult to see the mosaic from this photo but it was beautiful.

This is a view of the ceiling.

I was hoping the gold would show up better in the photos.  

There was a wedding beginning and Gabriella wasn't allowed to talk so she had to move away but kept talking and we could hear her through our whispers.  Bill doesn't use the whispers as she clips on Bill's microphone that bluetooths through his hearing aids.  There is someone else in our group that also uses a hearing aid microphone.  

It was very nice to view the cathedral and also see it being used for a wedding.  It seems it's not unusual to have weddings that aren't on the weekend as many were postponed due to the pandemic.

We headed for Segesto around noon.  We were thankful for the hour and half ride after walking up all those steps.  

Nunzia stopped us by a shop where a local artisan was making mosaic items out of glass that he gets from Murano.  The last time we were in Italy we visited Murano glass and saw them hand blow glass.  We bought a vase which has our name on it.

Around 1:30 we stopped at an agriturismo for lunch.  The owner drove down the 2.8 miles in a mini van to pick us up as the bus was too large for the road.  The vineyards and olive groves are on his 95 acre farm.  We had a wonderful lunch and everyone hiked down the road.  We saw a temple which reminded us of our Greece tour.  We didn't make it all the way but everyone else did.  The van took us down to meet the bus.  Sorry I didn't get any photos as I left the camera on the bus.

We had a little more than an hour ride to our hotel in Mazara del Vallo on the western coast.  I must say this hotel has nicer rooms and our balcony overlooks the sea.  We all wanted to stay in the courtyard for our welcome drink.  After our drinks and appetizers we moved inside for our dinner.  

It was another wonderful day.

Turtle Safely.......