Enchanting Erice

May 2-4, 2008: While I waited in the Segesta bus company’s office in Palermo (the bus “station” was a series of offices) I watched a young couple trying to communicate with the clerk. I think they expected the Segesta bus company to have a bus to Segesta (another Greek temple), but they wound up taking the same route I did. The bus took two hours to get to Trapani, but 40 minutes of that was getting out of Palermo, and 30 minutes was getting into to Trapani – the traffic was very bad in both towns. At the Trapani bus station I had time for a coffee in the bar before the bus to Erice left, loaded with locals, including a bunch of school kids. We gradually lost the locals, as the bus progressed out of Trapani and then down the main street of Valderice. When the bus turned round at the end of the village to make the run up to Erice, only a few tourists were left.

When I say up, I do mean up. Trapani is at sea level. Erice is at nearly 2,500 feet, literally, I would discover, above the clouds. The bus zigzagged up the side of Mt. Eryx, avoiding a couple of tour buses on their way down, and stopped outside the town proper. I swung my pack onto my back and set off through the Porta Trapani and up a steep cobbled street, arriving at the Hotel Moderno (https://www.hotelmodernoerice.it/eng/) somewhat out of breath. The Moderno felt especially welcoming after my horrible room in the Hotel Tonic in Palermo. My single looked out on a quiet side street and was a little dark, but clean, comfortable, and reasonably sized, with plenty of hot water and BBC on the TV.

Erice wound up competing with Ortigia at the top of my “favorite places in Sicily” list. Although tour buses visit during the day, I found it surprisingly easy to avoid their passengers. They packed the souvenir shops (carpets and ceramics are big) on the main street, and the cafes on the main square, but just a couple of steps away the narrow streets were empty. Erice is a triangle. Having entered at the southwest angle, I now walked through town to the southeast, where Lonely Planet promised a 12th century castle built over a pagan temple to Venus. The castle was there all right, and definitely photogenic, but what blew me away were the views. Clouds drifted below me, hiding and then revealing the pyramidal peak of Mt. Cofano, and the coastline north towards San Vito lo Capo and the hills of the Zingaro National Reserve. Blue sky, blue sea, restored castle to my right, ruined castle outpost below me, church belfry behind me – just stunning.

The more time I spent wandering around Erice, the more I liked it. I started the next day taking photos before the day trippers arrived, and then headed for the northern angle of the triangle. This part of town felt deserted – some of the pathways, overgrown with grass and bordered with wildflowers, seemed positively rural. Some of the stones in the town walls here, according to one of the bilingual signs, had inscriptions dating back to the Carthaginians. I stopped for mid-morning coffee at Café Maria – run by Mary Taylor Simeti, author of “Bitter Almonds”. I started to sit down inside, but the waiter led me upstairs to a terrace with a wonderful view. I bought a panini and apple for lunch from the alimentari just up the street and took it over to the east end of town so I could enjoy another view with lunch. Shady formal gardens spread along the high ground behind the castle, with convenient benches.

Besides looking north, towards San Vito, I could also look south, where Trapani sprawled inland from the coast, its salt pans a series of ordered rectangles beyond the port. Up above, I wandered from church to church, shop to shop, between grey stone buildings and along grey stone lanes. I went back to Café Maria for more coffee and delicious dessert – the local marzipan. I considered buying a small, colorful ceramic frog for my neighborhood coffee house, Mr. Toads. I enjoyed being a solo traveler again.

Eventually I went back to my hotel for dinner. I started with the excellent antipasti buffet – lots of mushrooms in various guises, artichokes, assorted cheeses, meats, olives… Then I tackled the mixed grilled meat secondi, which included a very good sausage and equally good meat patty. I retired to bed thinking I should maybe have planned to spend a third night in Erice.