Food Porn: Palermo, Sicily! (Part One of Two)

In early January a friend and I purchased tickets to the cheapest place on the EasyJet website, not fully realizing what we were getting into.
Several weeks later we got on a train, then a plane, and then a bus to Palermo, Sicily, flying into the ancient and beautiful port city.

Palermo is in Sicily, Italy, the island off the tip of the boot- essentially being kicked. It was a trading hub for Arab traders, Greeks, and Italians alike for thousands of years, and the British even have a fair history there.
This history is prevalent on every corner and street in the city. There are Baroque churches squashed next to medieval churches and High Renaissance government buildings. Sometimes a fascist building face even appears out of nowhere- and this is essentially Palermo, in that one should expect the unexpected and realize how much the city has a history.

Palermo is also a food capital and a historical capital of Italy. For any foodie, the Vucciria food market CANNOT be missed. Danielle Pergament of the New York Times no doubt can put it better than I, (here) but my words can at least attempt to describe this marvelous market.

An absolute assault of every sense you possess. Smells of fresh seafood mix with the salt of the sea, and water is sloshed onto the ancient streets while vendors yell out their wares and carefully arrange the piles of fruit and vegetables into aesthetically pleasing stacks and rows. You are pushed and shoved into people, and the beep of Vespa's with wooden boxes on the back slice behind you, barely missing running over somebody's clumsy feet.

One could spend hours poring over the wares. Some of the market is actually made up of stalls, but others are actual businesses nestled into the centuries old buildings. My friend and I purchased some fragole from the least intimidating Sicilian, and he laughed appreciatively at our slow Italian. Stuttering what we thought was  the right tense, we asked for un mezzo kilo di fragole and watched as he scooped them up and placed them into a brown paper cone he quickly rolled together. We ended up also buying kilos of cherries, and apparently were so enthusiastic that we each were gifted DVD's of the vendor singing traditional Sicilian songs on a guitar. I still have it (sadly, I can't find a player that is compatible to the disc!) and we departed to a friendly wink and with our arms bursting with red strawberries and cherries.

The Vucciria is a shrinking feature in the city, and one that I will never forget. The temporary foray into another world so full of absolute life (and quite a bit of death) was unforgettable.