Day Sixty-Three (Tuesday):
I got up early (4:30am) and said goodbye to Kirby. He was such an awesome host and travel partner and I’d love to see him again and have more adventures. Then I caught a cab to the airport at 5am and got on my plane at 6am, touching down in Trapani around 8am and catching a bus into town at 8:30. Sounds pretty complicated but it was actually pretty easy and there were no hiccups.
I found the hostel, left my bag and headed out since the room wasn’t ready yet. The hostel gave me a map, though, so I started my wanderings alone. I walked towards the port along the water but it was REALLY windy so I moved in towards the Old City center and found brunch at a panetteria. Then I walked up the main street in the Old City center and saw some churches (always the churches in Italy…). I eventually found my way to the other side of the peninsula (Trapani is on a little peninsula) and walked along the water on a stone wall/walkway.
Trapani's coast
Then I walked to the bus station I got off at earlier (coming from the airport) to check the schedules for places I intended to go to. On my way back to the hostel I stopped in a park (complete with a bird zoo) and looked at my map for ideas of things to do. Then I headed back to the hostel, paid for the room and napped for a couple of hours (I had an early morning!).
The park I spent so much time in.
When I woke up I decided to check out Erice, a medieval town on the mountain east of Trapani, accessible by car/bus or CABLE CAR! I intended to take a bus to the cable car station but ended up walking down Trapani’s main boulevard, a pretty long walk but it was full of sun and window shopping. I got to the cable car station around 5:30pm and decided to go up even though I’d have to come back down by 8:30pm. The ride was beautiful and VERY STEEP and terrifying but definitely better than a bus ride. At the top, though, it was foggy and cold rather than sunny and warm as in Trapani. I walked around the foggy Erice, window shopping and marveling at the old architecture. I tried to see more of the ruins (there is even a castle) but the fog thickened as it got later in the day and eventually I could barely see where I was walking, nonetheless see buildings so I headed back down the mountain on the cable car. I decided to come back later in the week with Joanna.
Foggy Erice.
I walked back down the main boulevard, stopping on a gastronomeria for some take away dinner of shrimp pesto with eggplant and some battered eggplant. Yum! Then I walked back to the hostel and ate my dinner, feeling lonely and missing Joanna. Then I wrote, read and listened to music until 11 and went to bed.
Day Sixty-Four (Wednesday):
The hostel. Oh, the hostel. First off, it’s FREEZING and I had to double up the covers by folding them over (it’s a double bed). Hopefully I’ve communicated with the hostess that I’d like more blankets for tonight or Joanna and I will both be freezing. Then, on top of that, the walls/doors are paper thin and you can hear every single person unlock their door from the inside, open the door, lock it from the outside then walk to the bathroom and close and lock that door. Also my room has windows (?) above the door so if anyone turns on the light in the common area, my room lights up like it’s daytime. Won’t be getting much sleep here… EDIT: Hostess did bring more blankets but then we had hot water issues and power issues. Ugh. It was a mess and definitely not worth the money.
Anyway, I woke up around 8am due to other people getting up and making noise and I laid in bed until the hostess brought me breakfast at 9. Breakfast was cold, milky coffee, two corn/sugar muffins, hard white sugar donut things and yogurt. I asked the hostess about the supposed wifi they have here but I ended up having to find an internet café to do my scheduling later that day and checking of email.
My feet hurt from the past few days of hard walking so I took it easy and checked out the internet café prices and times and found out that I needed to bring my passport to use the computers (I always seem to forget this…). I walked to the bus station to see where I could easily go for the day and chose to go to Valderice, a town outside of Erice on the other side of the mountain. I thought it would be as cool as Erice but it’s just a small town, granted it did have nice views of the mountain and the valley (it was halfway in altitude between the valley floor and the top of the mountain).
I got to Valderice around 1 and walked around but it was just a small town, nothing else. It did have very nice views of the valley, though. I found lunch in the one café open in the whole town and ordered a “dish” called an arancina (which I think also means “orange” as both the color and the fruit) which was sort of like a balled and fried shepherd’s pie but with rice instead of mashed potatoes. It was delicious.
View of the valley from Valderice.
I caught a bus back to Trapani at 2 and walked to the park near my hostel and sat down to add to the list I’ve been making of “What Italians/Italy Are/Is Really Like” (clumsy title, I know) which I will publish for your viewing pleasure on April 8
th (if I remember) which is when I have one month left in Italy.
While writing, an old man hobbled past, mumbled something to me in Italian and, when I told him I didn’t speak Italian, he plopped down next to me and attempted to have a conversation with me. One of the first things he said to me was that I was pretty and, after asking my name, immediately asked me if I was married/engaged (a ring was involved). Then we went on to try to convince me, I think, to sleep with/date a 24-25 year-old Sicilian boy (no one in particular) rather than the 20 year-old English boyfriend I made up to protect myself. I think he said I should do this because Italian/Sicilian men are stronger and have more endurance/better erections… There was motioning involved. Needless to say, it was an uncomfortable and awkward conversation.
After that excursion in the park I headed back to the hostel to read and hang out until 5ish when I needed to go to the Internet café to schedule for classes. I successfully did so (it was a close call as the classes I wanted we almost full!) and next semester should be awesome (relaxing AND interesting!).
Then I walked to the Old City center and caught part of a procession of one of the misteri (wooden religious figures used in the Easter procession). It was pretty intense and EVERYONE was there. I got pictures so you get a better idea from those. Also, I saw a couple more processions throughout the week. I walked around the festivities and found a place to eat later since it was too early at the time. Then I went back to the hostel to use the bathroom and walked along the water before heading back to the restaurant I had found earlier.
A misteri.
The restaurant was full so I ended up getting a delicious pizzetta from a very popular panetteria. I could tell it was good because there was a particularly large crowd of Italians standing outside it. And it was popular for a reason—that pizzetta was delicious! I brought Joanna back there a few times during the week since it was so good.
Then there were TONS of people in the streets so I followed them and ended up seeing ANOTHER procession. I forgot that each guild (bakers, stonelayers, merchants, etc.) had/has a misteri and they each have their own procession before the big Easter procession on Sunday where they all have a parade together. I learned this somewhere when I was researching Trapani. Also, it being Ash Wednesday perhaps explains why they were doing processions on that particular day but they may have done it every day that week for all I know.
After that I came back to the hostel to chill and wait for Joanna to land. When she got on the bus at the airport I walked to the bus station to meet her. She got in around midnight and we walked back to the hostel and slept.
Day Sixty-Five (Thursday):
I woke up late-ish (9) and took a shower and read, letting Joanna sleep in since she just finished a grueling exam period. She woke up around 11 and we headed out at 11:30 to go see Erice again, this time with better, sunnier weather. We took a bus this time, getting off close to the cable car station. We had lunch at a café nearby: Joanna had a panini and I had roasted vegetables.
We got to Erice and headed to the eastern side and walked around the perimeter, marveling at the gorgeous views of the valley below. They were absolutely stunning and my pictures cannot possibly do them justice as there is always more haze in a picture than when you see a view in real life. Then we bought admission to Erice’s churches (5 sites for 5 euro—pretty good deal) and visited them. We got to climb a bell tower and got an even better view though things sort of look the same when you’re already on top of a mountain. After touring the churches we saw the town’s two castles and sat on the wall talking about our after college plans—Joanna may have convinced me to move to England though convincing me to do so isn’t very hard. Afterward we relaxed at an outdoor café, further soaking up the sun with granite (icy treat) before heading back down the mountain to Trapani.
View from Erice--with sun!
We took the bus back toward the Old City center and headed to the panetteria I had found that made the delicious pizzette. We got some (I got two since I was so hungry!) and sat eating it by the water. Then we walked to the other side of the peninsula and checked the times for the ferries to the nearby islands (for Saturday) before heading back to the hostel for a pre-dinner nap.
We got up around 9 and went to a restaurant around the corner from our hostel—we both had pasta with shrimp and salmon sauce which was heavy but delicious as is all food in Italy—there is literally no Italian dish save the caprese salad that does not make me feel guilty when I eat it.
After dinner we came back to the hostel and went to bed early since we had an early bus to catch to Palermo the next day.
Day Sixty-Six (Friday):
We woke up at 6:45 to take showers but there was no hot water…We got dressed and left around 7:45 to catch our 8:05 bus to Palermo. We caught the bus and arrived in Palermo around 9:30 and headed to find a map which we ended up buying at a newspaper stand. Then we walked to the Vaccini market which was a combination of Alba’s Saturday market and a food market (complete with octopus on ice). We walked through the market, looking for sandals. I have been on the hunt for sandals since the weather started getting warmer because I didn’t bring any with me to Italy. I had given up my search since I wasn’t finding what I wanted—everything was heeled—but Joanna had a similar mission so we looked in the market, eventually finding them on a whim on our way to the bus station later in the day.
After leaving the market we looked for a place to have lunch but nothing was open yet so we hung out in H&M (totally didn’t buy anything, I swear!) until 12:30 when a nearby pizzeria opened for lunch. We split a caprese salad and Romano (ham) pizza for a light lunch. While eating we spent our time trying to figure out where the table of tourists sitting next to us was from—we settled on Germany with a strange dialect.
Then we walked toward the palace and Orleans garden but ended up not being able to get in the park so we sat at a pasticerria in a nearby park and Joanna had a strawberry cream something and I had PEANUTTO gelato! I didn’t even know I had ordered it because it looked different from Vaccaro’s (for those of you who don’t know, Vaccaro’s is a Sicilian bakery in Baltimore’s Little Italy that is amazing and I love it) and didn’t have a tag on it. I was so excited when I tasted it—yum! I hadn’t seen it at other gelaterias so I had forgotten about it but now I always look (much to my disappointment since I have yet to see it since).
We hung out in the park and then decided to catch a bus back to Trapani, catching one at 4 and getting back to Trapani at 5:30. We walked around and managed to see a bit of yet another misteri procession (Good Friday) but we were tired so we didn’t stay long and instead headed back to the hostel for more naps (it’s our vacation—we can relax if we want to!).
We got up at 9 and went to a nearby restaurant that had pesto Trapanese on the menu, thinking we should try it while we were here. It turned out to be very overwhelmingly garlicy. It was red pesto with undercooked pasta and enough garlic to kill an army of Twilight vampires (not that that is saying much…). Seriously, though—it was painful to drink water once that amount of garlic had coated our tongues. Bleh.
We finished dinner and went back to the hostel to read and sleep, sleep, sleep!
Day Sixty-Seven (Saturday):
Woke up around 8:45 to eat breakfast then showered (warmish water) and went to the port to catch a ferry to the largest of the three islands off the coast of Trapani, Favignana. We got to the island at 12 and went to have lunch while we waited for the train tour (small car and carts in the shape of a train and train cars. Yeah, we were those people) to open after siesta. We wanted pizza but the restaurants only serve pizza for dinner for some reason so we settled for pasta—I had tuna pasta and Joanna had zucchini and shrimp pasta. Both were pretty good but not amazing.
At 2 we caught the train tour at the port and it took us around the island’s beautiful scenery—full of flowery fields, turquoise waters and deep, mysterious grottos. The tour took about an hour and a half and we had to wait an hour after we got back for the next ferry off the island so we hung at a table outside a café with some gelato, basking in the sun.
The train from our tour.
Favignana.
We caught our ferry back to Trapani and looked for postcards along the port, heading in to the Old City center. Since we were nearby we had dinner at the awesome panetteria with the pizzette I’ve been raving about. Then we headed back to the hostel for an early night since Joanna had a super early flight the next morning.
Day Sixty-Eight (Sunday—Easter):
Joanna got up around 4:30 and left to catch the 5:00 bus to the airport for her 6:30 flight back to the Netherlands. Ugh. I got up at 8:30 and showered and had breakfast, already feeling pretty lonely without Joanna.
I went to the bus station to check time for the airport and San Lo Capo (the main beach nearby) as a possible day trip. I decided to just hang out in Trapani since my bus to the airport was at 5:15 and I didn’t really want to spend any more money on bus trips.
Jesus on his way to church on Easter Sunday.
Since everything in Trapani was closed, however, I had to resort to old-fashioned entertainment and bought a coloring book and markers at a store after walking all over town looking for them (hey, it was a mission). I eventually found them and sat at a closed café that had some tables out and colored for a few hours while listening to my iPod. Then I got hungry and set off on a mission to find an open café…also a very difficult task. I found one and had a calzone with prosciutto and cheese in it. It was pretty good.
My lovely coloring.
I walked around some more and ended up checking out of the hostel and going to the airport early (caught an earlier bus). I met up with Kiki at the airport since she was also in Trapani with friends for Spring Break and we had the same flight back. We sat around in the airport and had vending machine pizza for dinner—it was surprisingly good! No complaints.
Vending machine pizza!
We got on our plane at 7:20 and got to Torino in time to catch the 9:05 bus into the city where we checked into our hostel. It had internet so I stayed up pretty late taking advantage of that. Then we went to bed!
Day Sixty-Nine (Monday):
Woke up around 8:30 and played around on the computer and took a shower, checking out of the hostel around 10:15 to find breakfast. Again, everything was closed (Easter Monday is also a holiday?) so this was difficult but things at the train station were open so I had…McDonald’s. It was expensive and tasted weird (they spice/pepper their beef??) but the milkshake was good. Our train was at 11:20 and we got in to Alba at 1 on the dot. I was so happy to be back in Alba after being gone so long. It was sunny and warm and people were out at tables outside cafes and I was so happy walking down Via Maestra. It was perfect and I’m excited to be back with spring in Alba in front of me.
This weekend we’re going to Florence on the school’s tab and it should be awesome. I intend to spend a lot of time and money at the leather market—probably a whole day if I can. The school might have activities planned for us but I have no idea. Tuesday (or maybe Wednesday—I forget) we have our Religions midterm so I should study for that at some point but I’m too busy loving my internet and catching up on TV and such. Plus, it’s so beautiful out!
People should be coming back tonight from their respective trips (Kate, Erin and Jordan from the Canary Islands and Laura from Copenhagen [or was it Stockholm…I forget]) but Kiki and I will most likely eat without them. Even with all the pizza I’ve had this Break, I’m gonna vote for dinner at Duchessa! Yum pizza (as if pasta is a healthy alternative…)!
P.S. This is probably my longest blog post at 3,200 words and 6 pages on Word. Hope you enjoyed it and my pictures!
P.P.S. Pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=163497&id=504487681&l=0eed2d7813
Guess what--the tower in Pisa leans.
Beautiful Florence duomo.
Rainy leather market.
David. Note! This photo is illegal since photography wasn't allowed in the museum!
