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| Today, the sky is ominous......grey and completely overcast, with evidence of some rain overnight. At "our bar", they tell us to expect rain today....we are not happy about that prospect. And still no sign of our suitcase...it is supposedly on the way to Trapani, but nothing specific has been communicated.
Our plan today is to visit the Phoenician archeological site of Motya (or Mozia), a small island about half a mile off the coast near Marsala. It was one of the three major Phoenician cities in Sicily dating back to the 8th century B.C. and was excavated by an amateur archaeologist who was in the Marsala wine business--Joseph Whittaker. You need to take a ferry which leaves from one of the salt producing areas along the coast in the shadow of the old windmills that used to be used to move the water and grind the salt. Our boat is full of a group of Italian school children on an "instructional study trip". On the island, we make our way around the perimeter following the guide book past old fortifications, temples, residential areas, a mosaic and an old man-made harbor. There is also an underwater causeway--a paved road set in the shallow water which goes to the mainland; it can still be crossed today. The island is ablaze with wild flowers, as is the rest of Sicily, and this makes the walk around the island even more pleasant. We make a short stop at the museum...unfortunately the star attraction--a sculpture of a young man--is not at his regular display area and there is no explanation of where he has gone off to. There are lots of vases, urns, utensils, etc. from the period. Whittaker had collected them all personally, but he drove curators crazy because he never catalogued or labelled any of his finds. While in the museum, we meet the Italian couple who had witnessed the purse snatching the day before...they were very solicitous and asked whether the purse had turned up. On the boat trip back from the island, we strike up a conversation--half in English, half in Italian--with part of the group of schoolchildren. They are fourth graders and we have a chance to learn their names, where they were from (Piazza Armerina) and what they are studying. They want to know where we live and one boy wants to know what soccer team we root for and whether we like dogs. They were all very cute and it was a nice exchange. Now it is lunch time so we head for the city of Marsala....further down the coast. We are looking for a light lunch so we head for a "tavola calda" that we had read about in a couple of guidebooks---a bar with prepared food and sandwiches that functions like a cafeteria, but your food is brought to the table. We find it easily--through a neat bit of navigating by Diana. The food is very attractive but we feel a bit rushed in making up our mind....Diana orders cannelloni I order a baked rice dish and we decide to share an arancino. The arancino is fine, but both entrees are huge and sort of ordinary.....we don't feel as if we had a satisfactory lunch. By now the sun is out....so we drive to main gate of the city, find a parking space immediately and walk into the old city. It is an attractive "centro storico" with big public buildings and the main church "in restauro". There is a big Garibaldi symposium being held over the weekend--May 11 is the anniversary of the beginning of his "March on Rome" that culminated in the unification of Italy in the 19th century....he landed in Sicily with 1000 men and began his campaign by sweeping across Sicily before heading to the mainland. We see posters and banners displayed and there is big reception planned for later in the day. Unfortunately, the hours between 1 and 4 in most small cities are the "quiet hours"...stores are closed and people aren't in the streets--except for a handful of indefatigable tourists. We decide to abandon our stroll through the empty streets and drive into the countryside during the quiet hours, then head for another town--to the south--Mazara del Vallo at around 4 pm. The drive east of out of Marsala is beautiful--once we clear the industrial and commercial suburbs of Marsala which seem to go on forever. But the countryside is quite beautiful--rolling hills, winding roads, farms and pastures, higher mountains off in the distance. If you didn't know any better, you might be in Tuscany. None of the rugged, rock filled filled fields more common near Palermo and in the east. We stop for a coffee in Salemi, which had been devastated by a major eathquake in the 1960s but now appears to be a prosperous commerical town. The drive to Mazara del Vallo--back on the coast--is on back roads bordered by fields filled with wild flowers of every color....a spectacular ride. Mazara del Vallo is reputed to be the most African of Sicilian towns....Africa is less than 100 miles away. And it does have a different look and feel...although I could never put my finger on what was so African about it--squared-off buildings with wrought iron balconies, perhaps. We drive in and immediately head for the waterfront--there are nice beaches right in town and an active fishing fleet. We park in the main square--bordered on three sides by handsome old buildings--the cathedral, the bishop's palace and the old town hall--and on the fourth, by an ugly late 20th century office building. The historical center is a warren of small commercial and residential streets punctuated with big churches in the heavily decorated Sicilian baroque style. There is a new museum built to house a recently discovered bronze statue of a dancing satyr--pulled from the sea in the mid-1990s; the satyr has become the focus of the town's tourist promotion effort. We put off a visit until our next time in Mazara. We walk to the part of town that was the Jewish quarter--pre-1492--and see a plaque put up in the 1930s commemorating the expulsion of the Jews 450 years before. We get in the car to head to the main street of the new town...only to be engulfed in the Saturday passeggiata and shopping frenzy. We pull into a parking lot and do a little shopping and strolling.....the streets are completely mobbed. We stop in an upscale Sicilian food shop and buy a few items as gifts and then head to the main street--I put more money on our phone and Diana looks for some lipstick to replace the one that was in the bag that was stolen. At about 5:30 pm we decide to head back to Trapani. My first instinct is to get on the autostrada which makes a wide bend to the east before heading north and then back west again into Trapani--probably twice the distance in kilometers. I decide against it and we head up the coast road through Marsala to Trapani. Big mistake.....lots of traffic outside the towns, but worse in the towns, it is almost gridlock. The main road takes us right through the middle of Marsala at the height of the passeggiata--the traffic crawls. We hit more traffic as we approach the modern town of Trapani. It takes us almost two hours to go the distance--less than 50 miles. This late Saturday afternoon traffic phenomenon has happened to us before.....someday we will learn not to drive in the middle of it. The desk clerk at the hotel tell us that our suitcase has arrived in Palermo, but that Alitalia is so backed up, it won't be sent until the next day. She suggests that a friend of hers (who is a taxi driver ) can bring it back with him later that evening.....all we have to do is fax him an authorization to pick up the bag. So this saga seems to be drawing to an end. We don't want to go too far away for dinner....it has been a long day, so we decide to go to a nearby trattoria-pizzeria just across from the railrad station--Safina's. Most people in the restaurant are having the pizza special....first course of french fried potatoes (served with small packets of ketchup and mayonnaise), then a pizza--washed down with a canned soft drink--Coke, Fanta, etc. We order from the regular menu and have a very good meal. Diana has prosciutto and melon for starters--wonderful ripe cantaloupe, followed by fish cuscus (stronger tasting than the previous night but very good); I have the local pasta (busiate) with "salsa verde" and sausage--the salsa verde turns out to pesto made from basil--which is excellent. For a second, I have grilled tuna dish, which--midway through my pasta--I realize is a mistake. Italians tend to cook fish alll the way through and I like my tuna rare. When it comes, my realization is fulfilled...the tuna while tasty is dry to my taste. We have a nice local red with dinner. All in all, a very nice meal in a convenient location...the bill comes to about Euro 40.00. And it is only "due passi"...a few steps...to our hotel. Tomorrow, we will take the hydrofoil to the island of Favignana. NOTE: I left out one of our activities on Day 1. We took a drive around Trapani in the late afternoon and then headed out of town on Via di Sale-- "the salt road"--to see the area where they make salt by evaporating sea water. The practice goes back to the Phoenicians....rice paddy-like ponds are filled with sea water and as the water evaporates, the producers move the water from basin to basin until all that is left is a crust of salt, which is broken up and ground in a mill. It is then is left in piles to dry in the sun as well as to have the impurities washed out by the rain. You can see some of the piles uncovered and others covered with a layer of Roman roof tiles. The area is studded with old Dutch-style windmills which used to provide the power for moving the water and grinding the salt. We learned about this during our visit to the Salt Museum--maintained by one of the remaining companies who produce the salt. We had a tour in Italian with a nice couple from Modena, who helped us when the tour guide spoke too quickly and after the tour we shared some "jokes" about Bush and Berlusconi. We bought a bag of the salt to bring home...it is reputed to be--by its producers--the finest salt in the world. |
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