We’d had a decent day in Palermo.

Strolling the length of Via Vittorio Emanuele, we then descended into the catacombs. These burial tombs were initially for religious folk but then became a status symbol so others were placed in there, courtesy of their relieved relatives. Many were mummified. Most look unimpressed. Claire and I did not book a space each.  

Later, we visited Palazzo Abatellis, an art gallery housing the Virgin Annunciate, an Early Renaissance masterpiece. It’s yet another fecking religious painting. Great but sometimes I yearn for a godless soup can.

After such a day, especially in Europe, especially in their spring, especially upon a holidaying Tuesday, and especially anytime south of about 4.27pm, I am ready, as they say, to murder a beer.

I love Palermo’s Quattro Canti. Four extravagant Baroque facades frame an octagonal intersection where Via Maqueda meets Via Vittorio Emanuele. It’s pedestrianised with cruel little cobblestones designed to make you want to amputate your own feet later that very evening.

Locating a bar, I collapsed into a stool (tall chair, not a poo) on the street. ‘What will you have?’ I asked Claire. Browsing the menu she replied, ‘I reckon an espresso martini.’

The Italian lager, Birra Moretti was my choice. Six hundred and sixty magnificent millilitres. It arrived in a jubilant, brown bottle. Beside it sat a heavy tumbler. It was two euros. The waiter motioned to me, seeking permission to pour my beer into the glass.

When outside of Australia, my vowels involuntarily lengthen and become nasal like I’m from Far North Queensland. It bemuses Claire. Instead of thanking him with a briskly confident, ‘Prego,’ I drawled a bogan-ish, ‘Pray- go’ as if Pauline were ventriloquist to my somehow stutterless puppet.

I was extravagantly pleased with myself even as the zealous waiter sloshed it in, nodded and vanished, leaving me to stare at a glass of foaming ice-cream for agonising minutes.

Zipping and strolling by our table, an endless human tide flowed up and down the street. Claire and I became an island in the stream. The air about us hummed warmly with bubbling chat. We’d a day remaining in Palermo before flying to Rome and home, so this was an early celebration and acknowledgement of the utterly engaging, exciting island that is Sicily.

I attacked my Birra Moretti like a man who’d just stumbled in from the months wandering a desert. It was delicious and my screaming feet were silenced instantly. After a day among the dead and the divine, and now just alone with my dearest in one of Europe’s great squares, it was a perfect coda.

It was the best beer I ever had.