June 1
Since our B&B didn’t start serving breakfast until 8:30, we had a leisurely morning before starting our short drive (only about an hour) to our first stop of the day.
The construction of the Temple of Segesta dates back to the late 5th century BC and is in pretty good condition considering it’s over 2500 years old. The columns are so cool. You can see how they used circular pieces of stone, progressively getting smaller as the column got taller.
There was also an amphitheater at the site, but we took a pass on that. We saw a great looking one in Paestum and didn’t want to walk the 1.2km to get there.
After Segesta we headed to Trapani, where we caught the cable car up to Erice. We could have driven but thought the cable car would be easier. The town is located 2,460 feet above sea level on the top of Mount Erice. It was a beautiful warm, sunny day in Trapani, so we left our coats in the car. By the time we got to the top of the mountain, though, it was a bit chilly. The sun kept hiding behind the clouds which really made it cold.
Here’s a video of Pepoli Castle (first one on left) and the Castle of Venus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m849DDkOi4c
We walked around for several hours before having lunch. We both had Pasta alla Norma, a pasta dish made with tomatoes, basil, eggplant and olive oil. It was delicious. After doing a little window shopping, we headed back to the cable car for the 15-minute ride back down the mountain where it was warm and sunny once again.
While we were only 10 minutes from our flat it took about 30 minutes to get there. The booking site said it had free parking on site, so I was expecting something a little outside of town, but the GPS took us to the town center where the streets are just barely wide enough for even our little car. To make matters worse, it kept telling me to turn the wrong way down one-way streets. It was very frustrating! We finally found the street where our host was waiting for us. It turns out that not only is there no free parking on site, but there is also no free parking at all in the old town during peak tourist season which began today. So, after we got our stuff out of the car, we moved the car to a lot that only cost 10 cents/hour. We don’t have to feed the meter again until 10:30 pm on Sunday.
Once that trauma was over, we went out for a walk to explore. We found a tourist information where we planned to buy tickets for the ferry to one of the Aegadian Islands just off the coast. You can actually see them from Trapani. The guy at the tourist office told us about a tour we could take that gave us the ferry ride, a visit to two islands and lunch. The round-trip ferry ticket to one island cost 20 euro each and this tour was 40 euro. But we get to see 2 islands and have an authentic Sicilian lunch and open bar. We thought that was a pretty good deal, so we decided to go for it. It’s supposed to be another nice day so we’re looking forward to it. We’ll let you know what happens.