Trapani (Sicily), Italy

 

Trapani (Sicily), Italy                                                                       Wednesday, April 6

It is amazing how hard it is to keep track of where we have been, where we are, and where we are heading and when we will get there.  It changes almost daily, and the requirements for visiting ports seem to change as well.  When I started this entry I literally had to find paperwork to confirm if we had been in port yesterday or not.  We had been.  We had been in Trapani (tra PAN ee), on the island of Sicily in Italy.  I wonder what we did there.  Oh yes, we took a tour.  We got on a bus and drove out of the city along the coast to the south towards the town of Marsala and the island of Mothia.  We saw numerous salt ponds on the way and our bus landed amidst a set of working ponds.  They take 300 tons of salt out of these ponds annually.  No wonder Sicilians are so salty.  We hopped aboard a small boat for a short ride across the very shallow waters to the island of Motya. 

The island was established in the 8^th century BC.  At its height it had approximately 30,000 inhabitants on the six square kilometer island which was walled all the way around.  Multiple civilizations built on top of one another and Joseph Whitaker, an amateur archeologist from Great Britain, put a house on top adding another layer in 1886.  Being an archeologist of sorts he began excavating things on the island and collecting his finds.  The home has been turned into a museum with his finds and finds from other places.  One thing you learn over years of traveling—pot shards look pretty similar and after a while are not that enticing.  They do have a spectacular statue explained below.

The Motya Charioteer sculpture found in 1979 is on display at the Giuseppe Whitaker museum. It is a rare example of a victor of a chariot race who must have been very wealthy in order to commission such a work. It was found built into Phoenician fortifications which were quickly erected before Dionysios I of Syracuse invaded and sacked Motya in 397 BC.

Its superb quality implies that it was made by a leading Greek artist in the period following their defeat of the Persians, but its style is unlike any other of this period. It is believed it must have been looted from a Greek city conquered by Carthage in 409-405 BC

The museum also contained a nice section on cosmetics used by ancient peoples.   One other interesting piece to note is a causeway between the island and the mainland.  You can see it just under the water and at low tide it can still be walked with some difficulty.  It is a Roman leftover.  We walked around for ten minutes after the museum tour (fighting fierce winds that are always in the area) then headed across the lagoon and down to the city of Marsala to sample Marsala wine.   The wine tasting was nice, but it emphasized how Covid has changed our expectations in regards to tours.  We are spoiled with the small number of passengers on our tours.  This tour had two busses for participants.  When we got to the wine tasting it was loud, hard to hear, crowded and seemingly too many people in one place at one time.  It took some thought to realize that in normal times there would have only been one bus for this size tour and even one bus would not have been full.  Spoiled we are.  Back to the ship we went. 

Palm Sunday is in a few days so Jen and Helen (another woman pastor) decided to go back into town to see if they could find some palm fronds.  The saga was quite interesting for them as with many Mediterranean places virtually everything is closed in the afternoon for siesta.  I was surprised when she returned so soon, but they decided to go back out at 4 when things opened. 

Jen resumes: Oddly, when we tried to get off the ship for a quick walk to nearby churches, we found that we couldn’t exit the ship because the fuel trucks were just outside filling up our ship and it was not allowed to be nearby for safety regulations.  Back inside for a cuppachino, a visit with others, then we could leave.  The closest church was now open with lots of traffic flowing in and out—groups of students with an adult, looking a lot like a confirmation class outing.  The photos will show you the remarkable life-size figures of Holy Week and the stations of the cross.  

Note that the statue of the Virgin Mary is decorated with fresh flowers and a special arrangement at her feet of an oval of red roses surrounding a delectable grouping of fresh strawberries.  We couldn’t find a church rep to ask about palm branches, so we traipsed a few blocks further into yet another huge cathedral—one large chapel of which was already in the midst of a formal rosary service.  We stayed about 15 minutes but needed to head back after not finding anyone to consult there either.  As we retraced our steps back toward the first church with the life-size panoramas, we were shocked to find the street barricaded, policemen watching, emergency personnel loitering.  Helen went up to a police officer to ask what was going on.  When he learned we were from the ship (parked two blocks away), he smiled and in broken English explained that there was to be a procession to the church by a natty band dressed in coneflower blue blazers, and a much BIGGER procession to the church would happen in a week as Holy Week unfolds.  We were grateful for the info, headed back to the cruise terminal to show our cards to return to the ship, and discovered about 25 other cruise guests sitting in the terminal.  Waiting.  Come to find out, the fueling had commenced and now we were prevented from approaching the ship.  Again.  Oh well.  The shop and the delicatessen made a mint on us as we ordered glasses of wine, shopped, and waited for 45 minutes.  Our bridge instructor was in the crowd and was disappointed that nobody had a deck of cards in their daypacks.

Never a dull moment…