From wet hill town to dry Marsala

After another hotel breakfast buffet (all breakfasts were at least good, can't complain), we checked out and hit the road, safely driven by our half-man-half-coach-handsome-AND-great-personality Sicilian driver. I think it might already have been raining as we left Palermo, and it was certainly raining and becoming increasingly chilly as we climbed to the top of Mount Erice (750 m / 2,460 ft elevation), whereupon sits the town of Erice.

Grey grey Erice

By the way, facts and figures come from places like Wikipedia. I can bring to mind many things that our guides told us, but not in a systematic way.

So, per sources, the town started life as a Hellenized Phoenician settlement called Eryx. Carthaginians destroyed it, Arabic people from North Africa conquered and held it until the Normans came in the mid-12th century and named it Monte San Giuliano. Apparently, it's been called Erice only since 1934.

It never stopped being wet in Erice until we slipped into a restaurant for an extremely fine lunch (charcuterie/cold salad board was memorable, pretty sure the pasta was good but can't remember what it was, something with sausage, I think). The streets are pretty much all vertically inclined, and all are made of a variety of uneven cobblestones. Sweetie said she spent the entire time looking down at her feet so as to remain upright. I took all of five snaps, including one of the name of the restaurant.

Erice is an historically important place. I imagine we would have enjoyed it more if the day had been dry. Even so, a quick visit was fine for me. It's lovely, but it's made of mostly the same stone, and the street view doesn't vary a lot no matter how much you walk around.

[Sweetie reminded me of one magic moment in Erice. We were there on a Sunday, and the small town is dense with churches. At 11 o'clock, several of them rang bells, each a bit different sounding, to call people to mass, which created a lovely soundscape.]

'splainin' about Marsala

We bailed on an almond cookie tasting to do a bit of shopping because we just weren't hungry. And then we were off. I'm glad we visited Erice, the lunch was excellent, but let's head to Marsala, shall we?

As we drove down, the weather improved greatly. It was grey but dry by the time we reached Alagni Vini winery, which produces a line of Marsala wines called Baglio Baiata Alagni. We were given a very good description on how Marsala wines are produced, and then we set to a whole mess of tasting with accompaniments like bread and salty snacks. We went for souvenirs here, a couple of tiny sample bottles — almond liqueur aged in Marsala casks for Sweetie, dry Marsala for me.

After a stop at the Scala dei Turchi, cooler to look at in person than in photographs (except maybe the ones taken via a drone that one of the people in our group brought), and some kind of sweet pastry that we ate outside so we didn't powder the bus with icing sugar (delicious but too close to dinner), we arrived at our hotel in Agrigento for a one-night stay.

Dinner at the hotel restaurant was memorable only for its underseasoned food of some sort, pretty sure another pasta, not particularly inspired.

Pancho the travel pod with a preview