SICILY

TRAPANI/ERICE:  The morning sail into Porto di Trapani was very pretty.  Trapani is a small city at the base of Monte San Giuliano.  The city was heavily bombed in WWII and has been rebuilt with uninspired architecture.  However, the setting on a spit of land going out into the Mediterranean is very lovely.

The main attraction for tourists is to take the cable car to the medieval town of Erice that sits at the very top of the mountain.  The town was built between the 12^th c. and 17^th c. and after that there was no room for expansion.  People instead built in Trapani at the base of the mountain, leaving Erice as an unspoiled medieval village/town.  I assume that the interiors of buildings have been modernized but the exteriors are all untouched giving the feeling of stepping back several centuries in time.

The ship wanted $ 155. a head for a 4- hour walking tour of Erice.  Instead of paying that ridiculous fee a group of us simply got off the ship and found a local bus that took us to the base, gave us tickets to the cable car and a ticket for a pastry at the top.  The bus returned 3.5 hours later and the total cost was 18 Euros per person.  We had just enough time to walk through and around the town along very hilly streets that were made of very rough cobblestones.  However, I think anyone coming to Sicily needs to put this town on a list of places to visit.

Again we didn’t get back to the ship until post lunch, so we fortified ourselves with lobster and steak sandwiches at the pool-side grill.  This sustenance allowed us to do a short walking town of the old town part of Trapani.  Now we are trying to recover to the point that our feet will allow us to stand at a Captain’s cocktail party about to be thrown for loyal/repeat cruisers.  I shall try not to drink too much free wine in order not to snooze through the string quartet that will precede our late evening dinner in the Italian restaurant.

PALERMO:  Eight of us hired a van for a tour of Palermo, a city of 1,000,000 and home of the Mafia.  Perhaps the best part of the tour was simply driving around in traffic more aggressive than anywhere I’ve ever visited.  Betty and I happened to sit up front with the driver and it was more thrilling than any mid-way ride one could ever take at the fall fair.  The traffic was made worse by scores of protestors occupying various streets and many, many police hustling around in riot gear.  Palermo has very high unemployment and our driver told us that there are protests every day.  Today it appeared that it was high school students who were on strike.  They didn’t look particularly angry and perhaps just wanted a day off school.  Our driver does not have anything good to say about the government and several times longingly referred to Mussolini.  I wonder how widespread are such Fascist sentiments.

In addition to seeing the various sites of Palermo we drove to the nearby city/town of Monreale.  After returning to Palermo we had a pre-lunch visit to the catacombs (someone in our group actually requested this).  The catacombs stay at a constant temperature of 9 degrees Celsius,  which supposedly makes these underground rooms perfect for storing the 8,000 skeletons and semi-mummified bodies.  I kept thinking that this is a waste of this space and one could probably store at least 200,000 bottles of wine instead.

Once we felt sufficiently creepy we returned to the surface and our driver dropped us at a small restaurant for lunch.  Most people had pizza but I enjoyed pasta mixed with chopped, fresh sardines.  I realize that would probably not appeal to most but I enjoyed it. 

In a few minutes we will sail out of Palermo harbour.  We shall be sorry to go, but will console ourselves with a meal at the French restaurant.  A few minutes ago the sommelier called our room to query what wine I wanted brought from the cellar so that it would be ready for our arrival.