After our fantastic evening in Agrigento at the Valley of the Temples, we still had the rental car for another day to get to the other side of Sicily. Having a car enables us to find some off the beaten path things to do and M found us a good one. We went to Il Castello Incantato (The Enchanted Castle) outside of the small town of Sciacca, Sicily. An eccentric artist, Filippo Bentivegna, spent most of his life carving heads into stones and creating a garden with them. He made hundreds of the stones and the rest of the town couldn’t really understand what he was doing. He called himself the king and walked around town holding a stick up like a scepter. After his reign was over (he passed away), the town decided to stop laughing at him and turn his place into an outdoor museum. We walked through his many paths lined with zone heads and also saw some weird caves that we never really figured out… We were the only ones in the garden so we couldn’t really ask anyone.
After walking through this I ate this whole double hamburger in the next town….
Before finding our airbnb in Trapani, we needed to check out the salt making farms outside of town. Trapani has had made salt for a long time by letting the sun evaporate salt water for a whole year to create real salt. The hot sun of Western Italy and the huge tide flats make this a perfect place to do this. The granddaughter of the owner of one of the farms gave us a tour and showed us how they her grandfather used to do it before they had electric pumps. We saw the Archimedes screws that were powered by windmills. They also used a windmill to power their salt grinder that is now their tour building/gift shop/restaurant. She explained they only harvest the salt once a year so they now diversify their business and working as a tour guide is a lot easier than working in the salt fields.
After our salt adventure we found our airbnb, and returned the rental car after paying $7 per gallon of gas (Joe Biden did this?). We were only in Trapani 2 days so I don’t have too many pics but here is the view from our balcony.
The next day we wanted to go up to a small town on the hill called Erice. We just missed the bus and the next one wasn’t coming for 35 minutes so we decided to do a 40 minute walk to the base of the mountain. Long walk brought us to a the bottom of a very long cable car that brought us up to the deserted town of Erice. It is a summer tourist town, but in November, it is a ghost town. Most residents have moved out of town so it is mostly just for tourists now. When the tour buses stop coming in the fall, the shops don’t open. I also neglected to bring a coat… even though it was 75 degrees down below, it was about 62 degrees at the top and the wind was blowing. Oops… I was wearing shorts, t-shirt and sandals.. but we didn’t want to stay long anyway because nobody was there. We visited the churches and castles and took some pics of the view and then began our search for lunch. One pizza place was open so we ate yet another Sicilian pizza and then headed back down where it was warm again.
Next stop- Palermo, Sicily