Il Padrino Sono Io

The title is from the Godfather in case people read that and thought I was a little crazy. This past weekend my travels brought me to Palermo and Agrigento in Sicily. The main reason for me wanting to go to Sicily was that I knew my family originated from there before going to Ireland and then the United States. I had never been to Sicily before and was not expecting anything but a small, Italian town; however, much to my surprise Palermo and Agrigento are both busy cities. There are cabs honking, people selling food on the roads, and people naturally yelling Italian to one another We arrived in Palermo late Friday night, then took a two hour bus to our hostel, and there was where met a special woman named Agata. Technically, we still do not know if her name was Agata, only we know is that the hostel is called B&B (Bed and Breakfast) Agata, and she was the one who seemed to be in charge of things. Our hostel was interesting, in that we have been spoiled by past hostel experiences I guess, because this hostel was really, really, really disgusting! The following reasons are why this hostel was “unique”: 1) There was never any toilet paper in the bathroom, especially when it was needed. The technique of stealing napkins from restaurants and using it as toilet paper was our philosophy for this trip 2) We saw a transvestite going into the room next door (enough said) 3) We are 99% sure Agata is a thief, in that a resident there said he had his computer stolen 4) The bathrooms smelled like sewage, and in places there was unidentifiable “sludge” 5) We returned to our room one afternoon to see a clump of flies swarming Besides the hostel, our time in Sicily was incredible! We ate way too many authentic cannolis, bought many souvenirs, spent a day at the beach of Agrigento, wandered the street markets, and sat in a beautiful park drinking a granita, which is an Italian slurpee. People think of Sicily as being a disgusting, dirty place, but actually my time there was very pleasant and the food is enchanting. WARNING: Just a heads up in case people go there. People in Sicily do not speak Italian, but rather Sicilian which is a dialect of Italian. I did not know that dialect even existed!