Tag: Sicily

After a great- and food-filled- day in Palermo, we jumped on a train to explore more of Sicily, starting with Trapani and then heading to Agrigento.   Sicily is a large island, much larger than Malta, and we could have spent a whole additional week there taking it all in.

Day 48: Sicily Is Closed on Sunday.

Rich and I had an early bus/train combination (7:20 AM) to Trapani.  The bus portion was really nice, followed by a slightly grimy train experience, which is totally opposite of travel in the U.S.  (I love Amtrak).  Still, we arrived safely in Trapani at about 11:00 AM.

Our AirBNB host was kind enough to allow us to drop our luggage at our apartment since we arrived several hours before check-in. On the 20-minute walk from the train station to the apartment, I couldn’t help but think that we had arrived in a ghost town. We were clearly on a main street, and we passed 4-5 other people.  Everything was closed and really quiet.  It was extra creepy.

Rich does 100% of our travel planning, and usually my role is ride-or-die eager participant, but I may have asked, “So, umm, why do people come here?”

Turns out it was Sunday, and Sicily is the most Catholic place I have ever been (saying a lot since I went to Catholic high school led by Dominican Sisters and have visited the Vatican).  On Sundays, everything closes, and apparently, everyone stays inside.

We ate lunch at the one open restaurant we had passed, and then Rich and I went to the one open grocery store to get food to make dinner.  We took a long nap after lunch, made a huge pot of pasta (huge- Rich bought enough pasta to feed a family of 15), and stayed in the rest of the evening.  A true Sicilian Sunday!

Day 49: Trapani and Erice, Sicily

Greatest Cannoli of All Time in Trapani, Sicily

Turns out, we had also walked away from the picturesque Old Town to get from the train station to the AirBNB.  In the morning, when Rich asked if I wanted to take a bit of a longer walk (~35 minutes) to get coffee in the Old Town, I said, yes, absolutely, which was 100% the exact, right answer.

Ladies and gentlemen, with a delicious coffee, I present to you the best cannoli of my entire life:

Imagine funnel cake meets ricotta filling.  We picked the spot with the fewest tourists and the most older local Sicilian gentleman, and this analysis paid off.  I type this from Vietnam and would pay all of the dongs (dong=Vietnamese currency) to have this cannoli now.  All questions about why we visited Trapani were answered.

Trip to Erice, Sicily

We walked the 40 minutes back to the apartment (we were moving a little more slowly post-cannoli), got ready, and then walked another 45 minutes in the opposite direction to a funicular to take us up to the Medieval town of Erice, Sicily.

So a funicular is basically a series of cable cars that seat ~8 people.  On Mondays, it doesn’t start running until 1:00 PM so we got in a long line with lots of other tourists at about 12:45 PM.  We waited about 30 minutes and then it was our turn to head up the mountain.

After about a 15 minute ride offering the most spectacular views, we were in Erice.  Legend has it that on clear days, you can see as far as Africa.  Since the time of the ancient Greeks, a village has existed on top of this mountain.  Most of the castles and churches that remain are medieval but some date back earlier than that.

The village is super hilly offering breathtaking views at every turn.  We had a fun time twisting in and out of the small streets and then enjoying a pizza for lunch.

Walk Into Trapani

We walked into Trapani around sunset to see the churches and explore.  Although several of the churches closed earlier than we anticipated, the sunset certainly did not disappoint.  Trapani is a major port city in Sicily, exporting tuna and canned goods, and all of the water views were beautiful.

On our walk, we noticed that there was a pretty big crowd down by the water, that was growing by the minute.  We did a bit of google research and turns out that in Trapani, they start celebrating the Assumption of Mary, a Catholic feast day typically celebrated on August 15th, on August 13th by delivering a famous statue of Mary to the town by boat.

We are talking candles, hymns, fireworks, horns, sirens– Mary did not come quietly.  It was like nothing we had seen before.

We started watching Mary arrive around 8:30 PM, and at 10:15 or so, we were starving and had to say Arrivederchi.  We picked up a gelato on the way home and then ate several bowls of leftover pasta when we finally made it back to the AirBNB.

Day 50: Agrigento, Sicily 

Just typing day FIFTY feels surreal.  I cannot believe we have been gone so long.

We had an easy bus ride from Trapani to Agrigento and arrived around 1:10 PM.  Our AirBNB host Davide picked us up from the train station and drove us to the apartment, which was a huge blessing because our place was at the top of a steep hill I’m not sure I could have scaled with my backpack!

The apartment was super cute and comfortable and was a spot where we felt at home immediately.

The Valley of the Temples

This was one of my very favorite visits of the entire trip!  The Valley of the Temples is an incredibly well-preserved group of seven Greek temples mostly build in the 5th century BC.

Rich and I visited Athens, Greece on our very first international trip together in 2013.  Hot take: I thought the Valley of the Temples in Sicily was a more impressive archaelogical site than the Acropolis in Athens.  Walking from temple to temple in Agrigento, you get such a unique sense of size, scale, proximity, and overall grandeur.  It was really magical.

A couple of quick notes for folks considering visiting:

• Agrigento is not set up for people to walk to the entrance to the temples.  We did because we walk everywhere, but we were on the side of the road at points, walking on sidewalks covered in trash at others, etc.  We should have probably taken the bus from our apartment to the Temples, even though the walk was under three miles.
• That said, going back on the bus took us over an hour, and I’m pretty sure we drove into totally different regions of Sicily.  There were also some groups of rival teenagers on the bus and some social cues between groups that felt hostile but were hard for us to totally parse out with the language barriers.
• The entrance to the temples at the bottom of the hill was next to impossible to find (Rich: “Forget this.  If we don’t find the entrance in the next 2 minutes, I’m going home.”).  Taking the bus might have made that part easier, but just know the signs send you in conflicting directions.

Our Favorite Dinner in Sicily

As you can perhaps surmise, our trip from the Temples back to Agrigento was a bit stressful, and we were hungry.  We wandered into downtown Agrigento and stumbled upon the perfect dinner at A’ Putia Bottega Siciliana.

Prices were really reasonable so we ordered two beers, a meat and cheese plate, a dish with honey, goat cheese, and prosciutto, and a baked eggplant dish.  The waiter told us we had ordered enough, and he was not kidding– by the time we finished, we were too full to order dessert.  The space was modern, the vibe was laid back, and the food was delicious.

Day 51: Sicily Is Closed on Holy Days of Obligation

Rich and I both attended Catholic schools, and we both had to memorize our Holy Days of Obligation (i.e. days that are not Sundays when you are still supposed to attend mass).  However, all the A’s in religion class throughout the years mean little if you don’t recall information when it matters most.

August 15th is the Assumption of Mary, a Holy Day of Obligation.

When Davide dropped us at our apartment in Agrigento, he mentioned that the grocery store would be closed, but it was the kind of comment that went in one ear and out the other.  When we arrived at the bus station, however, not paying attention to that comment would haunt us.

So to make a long story long, we planned to take an 8:00 AM bus from Agrigento to Catania and then the next bus from Catania to Siracusa.  We would arrive in Siracusa around 2:00 PM.  However, because of the holiday, the 8:00 AM bus was cancelled, and the next bus would not leave Agrigento until 4:15 PM.

And we learned this when we arrived at the bus station at 7:30 AM and had already checked out of our AirBNB.

Even worse, we feared that every grocery store and restaurant would close.  We like to eat.  How would eat?  Where would we go to the bathroom?  Would we sit in the sun with our backpacks all day?  Would our cell phone batteries last until we could find our AirBNB in Siracusa?  Would there still be a connecting bus in Catania?  Things were not looking good. 

This will make a great blog post cheered the spirits of one of us much more than the other.

First order of business: we saw a vending machine.  We loaded snacks from the vending machine into my purse.  Chances of surviving the day increased.

Second order of business: we walked to the train station.  There was a train coming about an hour earlier than the bus, but our last Sicilian train experience had not been great.  We would wait the extra hour for the bus and could wait out the day at a nearby park.

Walking back from the train to the bus, however,  we saw a light at the end of the tunnel: an open cafe!  We found a table inside next to a plug (charging was vital) and proceeded to eat breakfast and lunch in this tiny cafe.  We were there for seven hours.

The sight of the bus arriving to take us from Agrigento rivaled the visions of the temples at sunset the night before.  The long wait was over!

The bus rides were comfortable, and we made it to Siracusa around 11 PM.  Lesson learned: we will now check holiday schedules in all the countries we visit!