September 3rd, 2010 Erice, the Trapani region and the most amazing pasta

Today we visited the beautiful hill top town of Erice, in the Trapani region of Sicily.

I booked a tour with an agency prior to leaving Australia and our driver arrived right on time at 9am.

Vincenzo was just lovely, with a good grasp of English and a constant smile on his face.

We started on the drive towards Erice, which would take us around 90 minutes, and Vincenzo began explaining that we would be stopping along the way at Castlemare, which is named because the town has a castle and is by the sea, mare being Italian for the sea.

It was a glorious spot, and I couldn’t help but take a more than healthy amount of photos.

We headed on towards Erice, up the winding roads and the weather began to close in on us. We were literally in the clouds when we arrived, and the temperature had dropped from mid 20’s to around 12.

It had also begun to rain. It wasn’t going to stop me though, and we jumped out of the van and headed straight to the main church in Erice.

By this time the rain had settled in and the entire town was bathed in mist. It was eerie. It was also freezing, particularly for D’arcy who was wearing shorts.

The old, cobbled streets became like rivers, with water flowing down them at a fairly rapid rate, but then, as soon as we thought we were doomed to get soaked, the rain stopped, the mist lifted and we were treated to the beauty of this gorgeous, medieval town.

As we walked around, me constantly snapping away, an Italian lady, from the north of the country, decided she needed a photograph with my Dad. Something about the way he was dressed made her think he was a typical Sicilian!

How funny that he hasn’t lived here for over 50 years and yet he is still so recognizable as a native.

We left Erice and headed towards the town of Trapani. We toured through the town and then drove past the salt pans in the area, where most of the salt in Italy is produce. It was a strange landscape with mounds of white salt dotted around. Something I had not thought about before, but salt is produced in shallow ponds, very interesting.

After viewing the salt pans we headed to an Olive factory where we were treated to a delicious lunch. For the first time I tried a Trapanese dish, called tomato pesto. It’s similar to basil pesto, but it has the addition of fresh tomatoes crushed into it. It was so amazing, there wasn’t any time for a photograph, we were all too busy shoveling it!