Orientale

The unreliable author of our guide book calls Palermo "fantastic" and "ravishing" but fails to mention the trash. It's a touchy subject. Go online, and you'll find that things break down between people who are puzzled by Palermo's overflowing dumpsters and people who are offended by those people. I agree that it's not polite for a tourist to complain about the garbage, but it turns out the trash situation gives you some insight into how Palermo works. To misquote Clausewitz, trash is the continuation of Sicilian politics by other means. When we visited in 2009, Palermo was having a trash crisis. The company that the city contracted to collect the trash was almost bankrupt. Add to that an ongoing labor dispute, plus the usual problems with mismanagement and corruption, and the result was a ton of garbage piled up in the streets. Palermo is all chaos and dysfunction. A noisy, rowdy, strung out city that's easy to fall in love with. It's a place that makes every other place seem too quiet and uptight by comparison. The streets are crowded with pedestrians and buzz with motor scooters. The traffic cops ride huge motorcycles and wear skintight pants and aviator shades and look like they stepped out of a 'Tom of Finland' comic book. We stayed here, at the Orientale. It was near the train station, a hotel right out of a Graham Greene novel. Originally an 18th century palazzo, it had become a teetering pile of hotel rooms that overlooked a steep courtyard crammed with parked cars. The Orientale was all marble and dark corners, and ghosts and guests mingling in equal numbers. The old lady at the front desk had a noble bearing and sad eyes. She handed us a key attached to a heavy brass fob. The sitting room was full of French tourists sipping beer beneath a fresco: robed angels and chubby putti peeling slowly off the ceiling. We walked up stairs and down corridors looking for our room. Past rooms where Cold War spies were holed up; or where dowager contessas who'd been swindled out of their fortunes by Italian gigolos spent their days reading Russian novels. Or maybe the place was just full of budget tourists like us. Whatever. I wish I could go back.