We woke at 7A and ate breakfast and showered and planned our day.

We had planned to take a bus tour to Erice, Trapani and Segesta, but we’re just tired of sitting in buses and cars so we canceled. Instead, we took a cab over to the Palazzo Abbezia in the Kalsa, or old Arabic, area. This houses the Regional Art Gallery of Sicily, which has a wonderful collection of medieval, gothic and late gothic Sicilian art.

We grabbed lunch as a trattoria in the neighborhood, and then walked to a few of the churchs in the Kalsa.

Chiesa di Santa Maria dello Spasimo is special because its both a very old church and also misses its roof – it was destroyed during World War II and never replaced. We listened briefly to a performance of motorcycles – I’m serious, someone was conducting motorcycle sounds.

All over the city were images by David LeChapelle, a famous photographer. However, I wonder how popular these are as the neighborhoods are very poor.

We also saw some dogs:

• Strays that we felt very sorry about, including one that kept trying to get to the kitchen of the trattoria we ate lunch at (the owner put a bowl of milk out for the dog, but he was a very determined dog and kept trying to get to the meat)
• A man out with his three dogs, two poodles and a terrier
• A large black dog looking at us out his window

We then walked to the main square and waited for a city sightseeing bus. They were, of course, very late, so we decided to ditch that, window shopped a bit (everything is closed on Sunday here), and went back to the hotel for a light meal and sleep.