Our day started with a lots of rain, not a good sign for the Carnavale parade this evening. On the plus side our guide had informed us that if it rained we will have a happy hour at the Convent. Did I hear right? Is it wrong that I'm secretly hoping that it rains so we can have happy hour at the Convent? This mean actually being able to drink without having to sneak in the alcohol like we did in high school?? OMG how far have we come!!
A short morning stroll around Cefalu, a visit to the local museum and a visit to it's beautiful Duomo to see the portrait of Cristo Pantocrater (Christ Creator of all) this Byzantine mosaic is by far the most beautiful depiction of Christ that I've seen. Back to the story at hand, Fat Tuesday at the Convent... The rain continued throught the day it was obvious that we will have happy hour at the convent. The kids that go to school at the convent were not able to have their parade either. That means party at the convent! Loud music, confetti, costumes, wow this looks promising. If they let the kids party this hard there's hope for us!!!
After a little nap and another quick stroll around town, I headed back to the hotel for our happy hour, I was determined to get Mother Superior to have some wine with me. No such luck, although I was able to get my picture taken with her when she came to check on us.
The nuns were nice, as I said, Mother Superior came to say hi (although I'm sure she was checking on us), then another one of the nuns brought us oranges and home made chiacchiere, which are typical Sicilian cookies made during Carnavale. Everything was going great, there was a big flat screen TV in the room where we were at, I was already planning to charm the Madre into letting us stay in the room watch TV at least until the 11p curfew.....
..... no such luck, suddenly our guide comes in with an announcement: " the mother wants us out in 5 minutes" WTF??!! it's freaking Fat Tuesday, we are just getting started, there are at least 3 more bottles of wine to be had, it's not even 8pm yet!!! The nuns have done it again, just as in High School they take all the joy out of you in a single moment. And what is worse, we had to clean the room, well mainly because I was afraid the Mother was going to be mad if we left a mess. Yep, good old Catholic guilt.
At least I got to chat with her about the Pope resigning, she's sad because he really can't do it any more, his body is giving up, I beg to differ but I still needed a place to stay and was not taking the chance to let her know what I thought.