3 October, Saturday.
After waking up and breakfasting on toast and jam in the hostel, and saying goodbye to the Aussies, the Brit, and Giuseppe and Andrea, we headed out for the road. Genie and I took the Smart and the rest piled into the Yaris for an hour’s trip to Segeste. The roads ran along the edges of the cliffs over the sprawling ocean towns, perched on the edge of the Mediterranean, and then wound through the mountains up to the small hilly town, site of one of the most excellently preserved Greek temples in Sicily. Crafted in the Doric style, it still stands almost as it did when first built, its warm red stone rising into a full colonnade over a large base. Only the roof, never built, lacks. After marveling at this ancient wonder, we piled back into the cars. I took the Smart again, but this time Marcelo drove as we headed towards Erice, a mountain town. With the Smart in manual, we climbed up the mountain in jerks, at one point taking a wrong turn and almost venturing onto a steep dirt road which, seeing it later from the peaks, might have done us in.
But we made it safely to Erice, parking our car in the line on the edge of the mountain, overlooking the valley crashing into the sea below. We sought out food and ended up splitting up for lunch, since the selection was disappointingly touristy and none of us could agree. Marcelo, Genie, and I ate a small meal at a little café, just caprese salad and bread for the girls, and then filled up our stomachs at a local pasticceria, where the server gave us a slew of different samples so delicious that we ended up buying a dense honey-almond cake, marzipan, a little almond cookie, and a cannolo to split. So good! After lunch we trekked up the mountain to the peak, on which was perched an old stone castle, splayed across the cliffs and bridging the gap between them. Venturing into its outer courtyard, we investigated the rooms that started as an old temple to Astarte, then Roman baths to Venus, to finally a medieval lord’s castle. Made doubly beautiful by its long and apparent history, it was multiplied even more by the views from its crumbled outer walls. Over the edge, the whole of the surrounding lands were spread, from the wide clear salt flats to the crowded towns to the strips of sandy beach and their tiny crashing waves rising out of the cerulean span.
With our trip to Erice redeemed, we headed down the mountain to Trapani, a beautiful seaside town overrun by masses of tweens wearing purple. We met the guys, who had taken the Smart, at a beach bar right on the ocean, complete with cabanas and parrot-colored rentable beach chairs. We sat with drinks and just enjoyed the salty sea air. I was much reminded of Hilton Head, and was sad to leave when it was time to seek out a hostel. Which, in Trapani, is a rare sight. We finally, at the direction of a bartender, stumbled upon a sketchy bed and breakfast with a letter-sized sign with name and phone number bolted next to a wide wooden door in a narrow side street. Katie called the number and Salvatore told us he would be there in five minutes. We all took bets on what he would be, but were all wrong. Walking briskly up to us was a cheerful old Italian man with a fluffy gray moustache and a shirt stained from cooking pasta sauce in his nearby Trattoria. He lead us up yet another set of dark and dubious stairs to a quaint little apartment, decorated with mismatched wallpaper, the kind of porcelain figurines that Great Grandma used to hoard, and shiny bedspreads straight out of a Carol Wright catalogue. It was the perfect chintzy Italian apartment and we had it all to ourselves.
After naps, we went to Salvatore’s trattoria for an expensive but delicious dinner of spirally pasta in a local pesto sauce, bread, wine, and for me and Marcelo, cous cous pescatore. We walked to a gelato place after that, then grabbed drinks at a corner store and sat on the wharf, just talking and enjoying the sea air. After, we headed to a café for a small tasting of Trapaneze winds, delicious and made spicy from the burning-hot snacks they gave us, and cassata, a Sicilian cake with almond paste and fruit. At the bar after that was our first Pineapple (our code word for Mafia) sighting; for, Sicily is one of the only places still run by the Mob. There was a large, imposing looking man in a button down shirt standing behind the bar not doing work, and he didn’t seem to be able to answer any of our questions about the selections either. When Genie saw the waitress pass him a wad of cash and heard him say, “I need 200 more,” we knew we had our pineapple. The others had local wine too sugary for me and Genie and I had capiroskas, and we sat and sipped while playing the one word story game, which got a little ridiculous with the innuendos and had us laughing obnoxiously. We tried a chic place called Muna after that but we were too tired to wander much, and just walked around enjoying the modern quaintness of Trapani before heading to bed, cheered by news of an ND football victory. As always, when I’m not there to jinx it.
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