15 March 2024 – Trapani
Miles driven today = 33
Total Miles to date = 2,382
On the way back down the winding road from our mountaintop overnight perch at Erice, we were able to pull over at a viewpoint looking out over Trapani, which sits on a scimitar shaped rocky outcrop of land. A little way offshore you can see the Egadi Islands and to the left of the town you can see the salt pans where the numerous varieties of flavoured salt we spotted the other day in Palermo would have originated.
When we left Erice the sky was crystal clear but its cloudy micro-climate had returned by the time I took this photo looking back at the mountain. You can get a cable car up there from Trapani. It only takes 15 minutes but it doesn't start operating until later in March.
We made a quick Euro Spin stop and then got ourselves parked up close enough to walk into the historical centre.
As the crow flies, Trapani is much closer to Tunisia than it is to mainland Italy so naturally a lot of its architecture has a North African feel to it. This is the 13th Century Conca Bastion.
This is the old fish market. In medieval times Trapani made its money as a major trading post. Then in the 19th and early 20th Centuries it flourished as a tuna fishing port. I've been to the Tuna auctions in Tokyo before so I can imagine what this place might have been like filled with fish the size of a small car.
At the very end of the rocky spit stands the Ligne Tower. It was originally built in 1671 in order to defend the coastline and communicate with other similar towers via lanterns. It was armed with canon until the 1860s and remained in use after that as a means to control shipping traffic.
We wandered past the dock where fishermen were selling today’s catch directly from the back of their boats.
As fresh as it gets! We also went into the indoor fish market but one of the stallholders got very grumpy with me when I tried to take a cheeky photo of his wares. He started gesticulating something along the lines of photographs don’t feed his family and I guess he had a point.
Believe it or not, we didn’t go inside a single Church today!
Temperatures are still hovering in the high teens and the locals remain wrapped up in woolly scarves and puffa jackets but I was glad of the shade that this avenue of trees offered.
Piazza Garibaldi with a statue of the man himself.
We wandered along the length of Via Garibaldi in the historical old quarter.
There were some fabulous old Palace doors to admire.
Behind a window we spotted this display of old urns and vases which had been retrieved from the Sea.
The rather Art Deco looking post office building dated 1927.
We saw more tiny 2 seater cars today than anywhere else in Italy. Perfect for parking sideways in a standard parking space.
It’s not just the architecture here which has a North African feel to it. The cuisine does too. We had heard that the local speciality is a seafood couscous served with a fish sauce so I had to try some and it was delicious. Lisa fancied swordfish again, this time served up with a spicy orange sauce.
We returned to the van via the gardens of the Villa Regina where lovely old trees were intermingled with busts of austere looking gentlemen.
We decided to head South a little bit for tonight’s stopover, a few miles past the town of Masala, which is the most Westerly town in Sicily and therefore represents something of a turnaround point on our trip as we will effectively be heading back East towards the Italian mainland from here. We are at Camping Village Lilybeo which is a €23 a night ACSI site. We were thinking of making this a 2 night stopover anyway but the showers here are the best we’ve come across on this trip so that’s nailed it for us. They are hot, powerful, spacious and clean and there is none of that ridiculous pushing a button every 5 seconds malarkey. It’s the little things that count.
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