Off to Erice, an old town on the top of a mountain.....well a 750m one anyway.......a bit higher than Mt Dandenong but rising straight from the sea and surveying all around it. The road up was steep and winding, but good quality with a bit of width at the corners and protection on the cliff side. Marjan did not think she was going to die, though she was trying to push a hole through the car floor.
Erice's history...nothing special...founded by Phoenicians and Elymians, Hellenised, destroyed in the first Punic war by the Carthaginians, conquered by the Arabs, the Normans, the Spaniards and then I lost interest. Suffice to say it reeks of history.
We got to the top well before the bus loads arrived, found a park just outside one of the old town gates and started walking. The car parking machines were broken....what luck. Absolutely amazing place, a bit misty though, as Mt Erice had decided to collect a cloud as a crown. We would get occasional glimpses of the Mediterranean through gaps in the buildings and/or clouds.
We bought a group ticket to do a few of the rides for an all-together price, sort of like Dreamworld only older. So essentially we wandered around, went in to some buildings and around others, made a mad dash back to the car park to find my phone still sitting on the roof of the car, checked out some amazing ceramics....if Erice were Mt Dandenong we would have a house full of gorgeous ceramics....and have a chicken one for Liz.
There is so much stuff packed into such a small area.......and not enough money to maintain it all as it could be.....a little like Sicily itself...….
Some of the churches were spectacular. I particularly liked the ceiling in San Martin.
We climbed the tower.....what is it with us.......and eventually ended up back in the car park.....now jam packed with people ........ I panicked.....the ticket machines were working.....I went to chat to the parking attendants...neither spoke English....my Italian though shone.....or at least managed to hold its own and they suggested I just drive off and they would forget all about it.....somebody was standing in my spot when I got to the car.....to reserve it, I almost ran over her toes to get out.
Down we went. Seemed easier once we cleared the fog........
We decided to look at a different, contrasting kind of history. A little place called Grotta Mangiapane......this is the history of the conquered rather than the conquerors who lived in Erice. A rural Sicilian village making do in a cave/cliff overhang. Occupied till after WWII the place reeks of poverty.
The hoity toity Greeks/Normans/Spaniards etc up in their hill towns, the locals huddling in a cave.....the gentle fog and breeze above, the scorching sun below.......hard to swallow for Sicilians being overrun by everybody under that harsh sun.
Anyway we found a beach......sort of ……..to have a picnic lunch......very late for us........and again the contrasts were astonishing......an amazing location, next to a quarry.......the blue Mediterranean edged by broken bottles and debris.
Back to Scopello where we visited the Tonnara, the old tuna station. Now private land, it was gorgeous and too tempting not to risk the sea again. SO another swim, no Medusa.....in sea of cerulean blue....the water seems to be a velvet sheet holding you......by the way the salt level is so high you could not drown unless weighed down by several bricks. I tried diving and it was a struggle to get down about 7-8 feet. Lovely.
My Italian again held up well when the local grocer made a joke about me wanting carciofini when I was a big bloke and should have some carciofo. I got it and managed to smile and snaggle some tuna as well for our antipasto.....sort of like canned but nothing like canned......
By the way, what I am not sharing.....till now.....is that I believe Sicily could flood the world with parking attendants. Wherever you go someone has their hand out looking for a a parking fee. The consequence of this is that locals seem to park wherever they can manage to leave enough room on the road to squeeze a Fiat 500 through. Also entry to everything seems to cost money- toilets, churches, tuna stations, nature reserves, car parks. By the end of the day the wallet is considerably lighter.
Still, some of the town we went through today spoke of a pretty hard scrabble life.
By the way, Marjan wants me to be her parking attendant.
1 comment:
The views are just spectacular!
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