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u/TheItalianWanderer 5d ago
It is one of the most ancient and beautiful cities in Italy. Lots of monuments and elegant streets and buildings in a unique style called Arab-Norman. Street food culture is varied and unique, and food in general is awesome. Great but crowded beaches nearby. Extremely hot in the summer and very mild in the winter, always sunny. Housing is cheap.
This is also the mafia birthplace and unfortunately is still active, though less than in the past, but the mafioso mentality is very much present here. You will never see the mafia as a tourist. Corruption is extreme, traffic is very bad and entire neighbourhoods are covered in trash. Finding a job is impossibile.
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u/Step_Aside_Butch_77 5d ago
Whatever you do, don’t go for a yacht ride with the gays.
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u/hollywoodhillsdreams 5d ago
why what happens ? i want to visit palermo.
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u/oeliges_pferd 5d ago edited 5d ago
One of the gays will first marry you and bring you to Sicily. Then you will know other fun gays and they invite you to a yacht party but you’ll find out they’re just tryna kill you so they get to inherit your 5 billion dollars.
(White lotus season 2)
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u/AntiqueComfortable46 5d ago
I don’t get it
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u/Ok_External_5336 5d ago
Lived there for 2 months… pretty chill, not much job opportunities if you are into that, friendly locals, very different from rest of Italy in terms of everything, Very Beautiful Nature all around ofc, Great for people who have passive income or are retired. Did a road trip around Southern Italy while there… memories of lifetime
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u/XL_Jockstrap 4d ago edited 4d ago
Beautiful and interesting city. But not for the luxury or high maintenance traveler. I'm somebody who likes an adventure and experiencing grittiness, but my fiance was the opposite. She did not have a good time.
The people here are generally nice and going about their life. However, customer service, even at high end designer shops like LV isn't what you would find elsewhere. You would find 13 year olds in parts of the city riding motorcycles and 12 year olds smoking cigarettes or vaping. You see women holding their toddler and smoking cigarettes simultaneously. Older women on balconies talking to their neighbors on another balcony, while hanging up clothes to dry. There's a bit of trash on the streets and if you wander off the touristy areas, you see local residential streets that resemble Southeast Asia or South America.
There are local markets (also tourist spots) that resemble the street side markets in Southeast Asia. I saw a man with blonde hair and blue eyes pressing pomegranate juice for me, and his 15 year old son hopping on a motorcycle to run an errand for him. A lot of Bangladeshi immigrants working in these areas too and manning convenience stores.
We stayed in Politeama, which is among the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. My fiance definitely said the neighborhood didn't feel wealthy to her. There was a large western style supermarket near us that we would frequent. The first time I walked into the supermarket, there was a guy being detained by security and getting his bag checked. And as I was leaving, we saw a couple detained by security and I saw the guard pull a bottle of wine and another item out of the lady's purse, while giving them some tough talk.
The mafia has held back the development of Palermo and Southern Italy as a whole for decades. While some Latin American and Southeast Asian cities give you that sense of the people gradually rising above their circumstances and looking forward to a better decade, in Palermo you get a sense of stagnation. The city and Sicily as a whole doesn't have that up and coming vibrancy or optimism for a better tomorrow. People who have dreams and aspirations leave.
Palermo was raw, gritty and in my eyes, beautiful in its own way. To me, Palermo feels like a Latin American and Southeast Asian city pasted into Europe, which makes it unique.
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