Trip Report

October 11, Wednesday

This day we were heading to Piazza Adriano, a mountain town where they shot Cinema Paradiso. The plan was also to come back to the sea and have lunch at Porto Palo in a recommended place. We had our fingers crossed that our luck would be better than the day before!

It was a lovely day. It was a pretty long, twisty drive with very beautiful and varied scenery. The town was centered around a piazza. There were some churches and a fountain in the middle. This was where the movie theater was in the movie. They had put up a plaque that told of the town becoming the fictional town in the movies and the local townsfolk becoming actors. It was nice. Everyone stared at us. It was obvious that everyone knew everyone. When I got out of the car this old Italian man just stared at me. I smiled and said Buon Giorno to him and he answered back. I guess he was a little embarrassed.

Movie locations in Piazza Adriano.

We got on a white road on the way back. It went so high you felt like you were in an airplane. We took some movies on the camera. There was some good accordion polka music on the radio so the movies are fun to watch.

We headed to Porto Palo arriving at about 1PM. The place is right on the sea with a nice beach [See picture right]. Good food. Antipasti of sardines, octopus, fish cakes, mussels in tomato sauce. We shared that. I had spaghetti with squid ink and Luther had spaghetti serenade of the sea in which he found no seafood. I didn't taste it so I don't know.

Dinner at the apartment was pasta with speck, garlic, onions and some cream egg sauce tossed into it when hot. Comfort food.

The coolest thing that happened was there was a knock on the door and Pascale was there with a glass with a vivid green liquid in it. She explained that her husband had just come from the first press of the olive oil. This I'll never experience again! Oil less than a day old. We dipped bread into it. [See picture - left] It was grassy, a little bitter and cloudy. A really, really cool opportunity.

October 12, Thursday

We perked our coffee in the little pot and I paid Pascale. It was a quite reasonable place to stay.

We stopped on our way out of town to get some diesel. Here was the only place where someone tried to cheat us. This is pretty good for Italy. It was an AGIP station. We went to the self-service pump and a man offered to pump for us. (this should have been a clue). Anyway, I was watching the pump and it stopped at 27.47 Euros. But then he zeroed it out and pumped 2.02 Euro more. Then he came and asked Luther to check the fuel gauge. It was full. I told Luther the 27.47 number. Luther gave him a 50. He didn't offer any change. We were sort of wondering what was going on and continued to sit there. I rolled my window down. He leaned in and Luther said, "I saw 27". I looked at him and said "it wasn't 50". He unrolled his wad of bills and gave me a 20. What a scam. It was good we were watching.

We took off pretty fast after that and got to the salt flats at Tripani in no time. We visited the salt museum where I bought little bags of salt and some local olive oil.

Piles of sea salt and evaporation ponds.	Windmill which was used to pump seawater.

We headed toward Ericé and ended up in the middle of Trapani but finally got signs to the right road. I guess it took 20 - 30 minutes to drive up the windy road to the town. It is amazingly high! It seems normal in the little streets of the town until you come to a place where the street slopes to the edge of town and then wow! Airplane views again!

Streets in Ericé.

That morning when we left Sciacca I had cleaned out the frig and tossed a lot of stuff. There was a good sized hunk of the beef/vitello, some of the speck and a little salami in there. I remembered all the starving animals and thought maybe we'd see a needy one on our drive. I hated to throw away meat when so many animals are starving. So I brought it along.

We walked around - not a lot to see. We went to a restaurant for lunch that looked the least touristy. It had pretty good food. Our normal antipasti but of tuna. It was really strange. A WHOLE year of salt on one plate! One was salami like and pitch black, hard and chewy. One was kind of mousse-like but salty! The other was dried, dark and salty! It was interesting though. If you ate each bite with some wine and bread it was quite good. (Luther was not so sure) The we both got spaghetti with clams. The little clams here are soooo sweet.

Then we walked around town some more. We visited the castle and near there in the English Garden we met a very friendly cat [See picture - right]. She had a broken tail and a twisted front leg like it had been broken but she climbed right in Luther's lap when he sat down. I ran to the car to get the meat we had brought. This little cat was not particularly thin but when I held out the meat she ate ravenously, as though she didn't know where her next meal would be coming from. She was polishing it all off as we left her. It was a LOT of meat for that little cat. She'll probably barf.

Just after that we heard yet another cat yowling. We spied it sitting on top of a high crenellated wall. Just then a little old Italian lady came from across the street with a small plate of pasta. The cat immediately hopped down and the lady took it into the garden and fed it to the cat who immediately tucked in!

We checked into the Hotel Moderno and I called our house sitter to see how things were. All is well. The cats have adopted Bonnie.

That evening we dined in the hotel restaurant. The reason we were there was that this restaurant was a member of the Buon Ricordo restaurant group. Each restaurant in the group has a speciality. If you order it they give you a hand painted plate with a picture of the dish and the town and restaurant name. I had two at home and wanted another. So I ordered the Couscous with seafood and got my plate. The area was settled by Arabs who brought couscous with them. It is not instant like ours but tasted pretty much the same. The food here was not good at all.

Views down from Ericé.

October 13 Friday

Our return odyssey was about to begin. We got to the Palermo airport early and flew to Rome. Unfortunately our plans in Rome didn't work out as planned. I had a really nice last night set up but when we got to our hotel they regretfully told us a pregnant woman hadn't felt well and had not checked out. Great, so there was no room for us. They had found us another room and after a hot and confused walk several blocks through cobbled streets and crowds we found the place. It was ok. It had 5 rooms and the people who owned it were nice.

At least dinner was good at the Spirito de Vino. What a hoot. Mostly Americans were there and funny, entertaining wait staff. We had walked in Trasevere (our neighborhood called the Greenwich Village of Rome). It was thronged. We had a glass of wine and went to the restaurant. The food was quite good. The place painted yellow and white. We visited the wine cellar deep underground with 10,000 bottles of wine. The most interesting dish was Luther's entrée. It was a pork dish cooked in the Roman style. It had all kinds of spices like cinnamon and fresh ginger. I thought it quite good.

Guesthouse card	Restaurant bill

The flight back was more comfortable than the one over. It was an Airbus 330 and the seats in business class were great. They reclined completely.

A fun trip but Sicily is not for the faint of heart. A little difficult to get around in. A little chaotic. A little dirty. But worth seeing.