Month: May 2023

All fine. As always the car hire makes a guest appearance. Obviously returning it full of petrol is part of the deal. So you get to within 5 miles of the airport and start looking for petrol stations. And of course there are none.

Luckily Mr Google came in handy, and unusually we had left plenty of time 😀. So retrace ur steps for about7 miles and found one. We’re wise to Italy where they very kindly fill up your tank for you for a slightly higher price – €.40 per litre so would have cost an extra €12. Luckily we remembered from our previous Italian trip and found the one self-service pump.

Fed up for trying to be diddled or pleased we’d seen it coming?

Otherwise all good.

We’d been keeping an eye on the forecast for Monday – it looked pretty bad but we comforted ourselves with the thought that it had often been wrong and we could avoid it.

Then we got this from the local Mayor

Translated

And our first thoughts were 1) we had no food and would we be able to shop; and 2) should we run away? As it happens, the storm covered most of Sicily so 2) made no sense, and we thought we’d risk going out to shop.

It wasn’t wrong

Except we got a break at lunchtime where Mr Grumpy even needed his hat

Ho hum. Didn’t make Agricento, and so might never do it.

This is what it looks like just for the record!

Just showing my ignorance of Sicily – Selinunte is another amazing place that I’d never heard of. Like many places in Sicily it has a very complicated history – Greeks and Carthaginians are two that I remembered from the gumph, including lots of stuff just lying about having been ransacked many hundreds of years ago.

It’s an amazing location, but either me or the camera weren’t really able to do it justice. I’ll leave you to figure out which one! So note the buildings, separately note the location and then merge them together.

It did include a cafe – decent views

Obligatory lunch, walk and gelato ..

Last move before we fly home on Tuesday. Hopefully some post-coronation sanity will have returned to the UK !

Took a detour through Marsala (of Sicilian wine fame, not the chicken tikka variety). To be honest probably not worth the detour despite it being quite photogenic.

But extraordinarily windy …

Aiming to dodge the forecast, but in the end virtually non-existent, showers. Also the huge rocks seem to have an impact on sun, cloud, and rain, so a bit of scurrying from one side to the other. But worth it.

And some discussion on how best to prepare aubergine 😁

Another amazing place I’d never heard of. 750m above sea level , and the cable car starts at sea level.

Not surprisingly some decent views …..

And they love their arancini😃

We’ve been anticipating and dodging showers for quite a while, but apart from a 5 minute downpour in Palermo we’ve been successful so far. Anyway, with some sun forecast it’s time to be doing not very much nor going very far.

Happy Xmas!

And a quick hi from Denmark

An amazing place I’d never heard of. You get a clue when you get to the car park.

About 2,500 years old and never finished.

And that’s not all. A mish-mash of Greek, Roman and other as befits Sicily. 

Bit annoying that the clouds lifted as we were leaving, so perhaps should have photoshopped in a blue sky!

A bit of meteorological inclemency in the forecast for the next couple of days, and so it’s time to do some more serious sightseeing.

Trapani was ok – Eileen really liked the buildings; I thought it was an ok distraction.

It’s rather nice here. Morning walk was lovely.

Then the main trip out – it’s only 5 miles from where we’re staying.