Italy Day 9

My last full day in Sicily. In some respects a bit relieved, though I guess I am not out of the water until such time as I have returned the rental car and gotten off the plane and found my luggage intact in Rome. I started out early, too early honestly because Italy’s daylight savings time started on Sunday morning but my wonderful iPhone didn’t update until I rebooted it which was after I had already awoken and showered and the like. So instead of getting up at 6:30 I was actually up at 7:30am. I did use up some time so I was not leaving too terribly early but still it was Sunday and I should have left even later still.


My goal as mentioned in Day 8 was to reach Segesta. It is about a 45 minute drive to Segesta if you follow the speed limits but I took my time and drove really about 60 to 70mph rather than the limit of 80 for the majority of the way. I was out the door just past 7am (adjusted for DST) and my goal was to get there at 8am or so. I figured if there was a sign that said it was closed I would try to go to Agrigento instead which would be two hours south of Palermo. Of course 8am was very early to arrive somewhere in Italy on Sunday but I really couldn’t make myself stay in the hotel any longer by the time I left. I was going stir crazy.

I arrived in Segesta at just about 8am and found that the sign only said that the place apperto (opened) at 9:00am. There was no listing of different times for different days nor was there any mention that the place was Chiasura (closed) for any days of the week or say at different times of the year, so I sort of waxed hopeful. Segesta is in the middle of nowhere sort of like Stonehenge is. It is in a remote area and has its own parking lot and a small cafeteria and gift shop. The parking lot was locked up when I got there. I guess that would be because once inside the parking lot you could pretty much get over the whole of the grounds as I found out later. I had to kill an hour somehow and I really only had two choices. The first and least desirable was to just sit there and wait. Even with a radio (that I never turned on) I don’t think I would have enjoyed that prospect too much. The second was to drive off and look around the area to see if there was anything interesting. I chose option 2 and drove out of the location for about 20 minutes or so having the GPS tell me to, “Turn around when possible,” about every 3 minutes. I suppose I could have turned off the sound but in some respects I found it amusing. I did find a small town that had an open cafeteria but I decided I didn’t want to fuss with putting away the GPS for the few minutes even though if I thought about it I already knew how to get back without any issue. Anyway I stopped there for a minute or two and then headed back to the parking lot. The roads were again winding but the location is in a valley rather than on a mountain top (well the parking lot is anyway) but I took my time not out of worry but because I was trying to kill more of it having too much already.

I got back to the site at about quarter till 9 and there was a van of people that pulled up just in front of me. He asked me if the place was going to open. He did speak some English. I said I didn’t know and at that point a man inside the gates appeared and said they were indeed opening in 15 minutes. So everyone unloaded out of the van and we pulled ourselves out of the way in the entrance for the parking lot. They surrounding countryside is quite beautiful. It was a tad grey out and there was a humidity in the air I was not really fond of but the temperature was probably in the mid 60sF so it was at least bearable. After the 15 minutes or so passed the guy opened the gate and the few of us that were already waiting parked and headed in to buy tickets. It was one of the more expensivesingle entrance fees I have paid in Italy at 9 Euro. Still I guess I was satisfied with the location overall so maybe it was worth it. In comparison though the Forum and Coliseum combined was 6 Euros. So it basically could be considered a rip off.

Segento is one of the oldest sites in all of Sicily if I understand things correctly. It has its roots in Greek ownership back in the 6th century BC. One of the main spectacles of the site is a Greek temple that the Sicilians claim is better preserved than any temple you will find in Greece. I will state that it was in great condition. That said I have yet to visit Greece (though soon I suspect) so I cannot yet compare. According to the notes the temple was never completed. It showed signs of being unfinished by still having the notches that were used to move the large pieces of column or whatnot that were used to build the temple. It is very large though and to stand under it really displays the size. It appears that they used to let people walk fully inside it because of some stairs within the now fenced off area where it stands. I was a bit disappointed with that. It is tantalizing to see a set of stairs that I cannot reach that would have allowed me up and into the actual temple grounds. Anyway, I still really thought it was an incredible piece of history to see. In my start I actually was going to visit the other areas of the site first but I decided to double back and visit the temple before it got too full of people (in case it did anyway). This meant I got a few good distance shots of the structure before I actually got in and saw it up close.

The remainder of the site is spread throughout history. There are more pieces of original Greek origin that dated again to the 6th or 5th century BC. Most of those were modified by the Romans who arrived in the 2nd or 1st century BC I believe. So the Romans really built up the area and it was fortified at times and they even built a large theater that was the other highlight of the location. It was in great shape. It held about 4000 people or so the signs said. I am not sure if there was any renovation done to it but for the most part it looked authentic. I assume that like the temple it was basically intact. The theater is basically the far end of the grounds from the temple. The girl at the desk said it is about 2km from the temple to the theater. Also the main trip is uphill to the theater. I took a detour route that started off from another of the items to see which was a fortification area that was modified into a siege weapon location during the Norman periods of the 1100s or so. I guess it started older than that but it saw a real large number of modifications. Again the Greeks started the site in the 6th century BC or so but then it got modified by the Romans and again by the Normans. The detour pretty much went straight up the side of a hill and it was definitely a good morning constitutional as it were. Unfortunately with the humidity it was tough not to sweat.

As you get up the mountain it is more Roman and Norman ruins than anything. At the very top is the ruins of the Norman castle that was built as a defensive point. The lord was apparently very wealthy and the castle was probably two stories tall. Based on some of the holes in the walls I saw I would believe it was. They believe it was likely to be 10 meters tall or so. Still it is a ruins so there is some guesswork involved. In some respects it is better that they left it in the state that it is rather than tried to rebuild it without knowing what it is supposed to look like. In most instances the ruins that have been uncovered were only found recently. I guess most of them were buried in the soil until the 1980s or so. The stuff up on the hill that is. I suspect they could see the theater without much effort and that the temple never really got buried but the rest of the stuff was more difficult to find until they started to excavate.

One more item to mention on the top of the hill was the mosque they found. Sicily has a long and varied history and has pretty much been occupied by anyone and everyone that could sail a boat nearby. The Moors owned Sicily or at least parts of it for a while and there are other locations on the island that bear this out. In any event they guarantee the ruin once used to be mosque because of the layout of the building which matches both ancient and modern mosques around the world and because there is a definite sign that it is pointing towards Mecca. I guess that is about all the evidence you would need to believe it was indeed a mosque. They say that the Christian lord that built the castle on the top of the hill did what any Christian would of course do when confronted with something from a different religion and tore it down. They didn’t speculate on whether it was used for anything else but at the least the building was destroyed so that it could no longer be used as a mosque. Surprise…intolerance from the Christians? I guess if Peru wasn’t evidence enough, why not more. It does beg the question as to why the temple was not destroyed but maybe because of the recognition of the Greeks and Romans as cultures that preceded Christianity? Best guess I can make.

While up on the top of the hill there is an incredibly nice view of the local countryside and even a few nice places to take more distance shots of the temple. It was incredibly windy up there but with the temperature and the humidity I didn’t remotely find it cold. Everyone around me was still dressed in the types of clothing you would see people in Massachusetts wearing in January (ok probably not the full winter parkas but scarves and the like and heavier jackets than I could have ever believed necessary. I was the only one in short sleeve shirt that was for sure. Still the wind was at times very strong and pushed me around a bit. All the same it did help make the humidity a bit more bearable than it could have been for certain. All in all I am guessing I walked a bit over 2 miles in the site and it was overall a pleasant visit. When I finished with the theater and castle locations I headed back to the gift shop area and bought a slice of pizza and a coke from the cafeteria for “breakfast.” It was a very thick crust pizza but possibly the best pizza I have had in all of Sicily (not that I have had tons of pizza here). I also bought a Kit Kat Dark. I ate the pizza and was finishing the soda when a bee found me and wouldn’t leave me alone so I had to ditch eating the candy bar until I got into the car. I was not ready to be stung and swell up. I ate the candy bar before leaving the site but it was obvious the bar had been stored in a refrigerator at some point. Nonetheless it was still good.

It was the same drive time back to Palermo. I suspected traffic might be light as it was Sunday and that did sort of prove out. I took my time anyway for the sake of it. I had the rest of the day to kill and at the latest I would probably be arriving in Palermo at a bit past noon. I could have tried to find another site I suppose but I figured I was basically on the downside of Sicily and it was best to call it a day. I managed to get into the garage at around 12:20 or so and dropped some stuff off at the room and ate lunch at the hotel restaurant. The only other “guests” in the place were the family of the owner of the restaurant. It is not run by the hotel. I ordered Rigatoni Francesca but was informed there was no rigatoni (in Italian, I am not really sure what she said, I just agreed) and instead I had another spaghetti-Os meal. It was a red sauce with some vegetables in it but other than that I am not really sure what it was supposed to be. How it was different than the red sauce from the spaghetti for my birthday meal I cannot really tell you other than the presence of vegetables and possibly some pork bits. It was good anyway, though I would have preferred the rigatoni to the spaghetti-Os. I accompanied the meal with a celebratory Moretti beer as I was done driving for the day and in all the Sicilian time I had I wasn’t really drinking much alcohol due to the driving and the fact I was skipping most dinners for their lateness. The bill for my lunch was only 12 Euro. I can deal with that. The waitress at least recognizes and seems to like me because though she doesn’t speak much English and I basically no Italian she has been attentive to me overall. I think they kind of make up their charges based on whether they like you or not in Italy because in general I have gotten bills that are less than menu has said it was supposed to be if added up correctly. Maybe they are just bad at math. I am polite even if I cannot speak their language well enough. I hope that is helping.

After lunch I walked the city one last time. I traveled down Tukory to Macqueda and up to the Teatro Massimo. It was open this time and I went in but did not wait around for a guided tour. I was fairly certain there would not be one in English, so what was the point really. I did take a few pictures and poke around their gift shop which really doesn’t even need to exist it has so little in it. After that I backtracked to Corso Vittorio Emanuele and then headed up towards the Piazza Indipendenza. This street is the street that the cathedral is on and leads up to the Norman Palace as well. It occurred to me that it was Halloween and I should have gone into the Cathedral and done the Kurgen thing from Highlander for the fun of it. Ok, it made me chuckle but I never would have done it. A bit beyond the cathedral I found a gelateria and got a caffe gelato (coffee ice cream). It was very dense and had a really good flavor. They garnished the bucket of it with coffee beans and a bunch of those got mixed in to add a bit of crunch at times. It being so dense it was very filling. Realize that within 2 and a half hours I had pizza, pasta and now ice cream. I was very full by this point. I took it up the street to the park where I parked myself on a chunk of wall and ate it. When I was done I continued up Vittorio Emanuele towards the Piazza. I stopped in another shop and bought a water and sat and drank that for a couple more minutes before cutting back across to Tukory. When I reached Tukory I felt it was still early so went past the hotel and walked to the far end of the Universitarie degli Studi before deciding I had walked far enough and turning back around. It being Sunday there was very little traffic all over town and it even looked like streets like Macqueda has been partially blocked off to limit traffic. I guess it being a Catholic island means that everyone takes Sunday as a family and rest day and does not really go out. Some shops were open and many were not. Not really surprising I guess. Maybe more surprising that there were any shops open. Still with the lesser traffic and blasting of horns by impatient Sicilian drivers it was a more pleasant walk than I had in Palermo to this point. The streets are still filthy and there is dog excrement everywhere and that is a total shame. After returning to the room it was basically just sit back and write this as it was not likely I was going to eat dinner so late. I tried to find some soccer on TV but even though I am sure there are at least a dozen games today, none of the stations at the hotel are showing any. It appears I have to gambling on soccer shows and that is about it. One has a strategic board and the guy moves around pieces to show where almost goals happened it looks. It is not terribly interesting. There is basically nothing to watch at all except motorcycle racing and I am not really a fan.

After six days in Palermo I can say this. The hotel I stayed at is more than adequate. It is clean and it is basically comfortable and the room is very big by European standards. I would overall say it is modern even. The location is both good and bad. It is good because it is easy to get to the motorway. I have been saying motorway due to the British voice of the GPS. In truth in Italy it is called the autostrada. Anyway, it is easy to get to the hotel from the autostrada and generally easy to get to the autostrada from the hotel. Having the parking garage does protect the vehicle overall. The fact that more than half of the cars out there have dents or dings or scratches all over them is a testament to how likely it would be to bring it back with more damage. The garage helped protect against that. So if you were to stay in Palermo and use it as a base for driving you could do worse than the Albergo Athenaeum. The bad is that from a pedestrian standpoint it is really nowhere useful. Of course I am not really sure where useful is in Palermo. There is no central location of good sites to see. The little bits of value are all spread out amongst the sprawl. Tukory is a main way basically but there are no real restaurants only snack shops and bars that serve Panini. I think more so than its location in the city my issue is that it is in Palermo at all. Knowing what I know now I would try to find a hotel with parking outside of Palermo and save myself some of the annoyance of the city. There must be someplace nice outside of town that would fit the bill and make things easier. All in all I could have done worse though. I think by this point I am ready to return to Rome. I hope I can get gas and get on my way to the airport tomorrow without too much pain. It is All Saints Day in Italy (the actual holiday that Halloween stole from) on Monday and I am not sure if that means that places are open or closed or anything at all. I am going to try to get on my way by 10:30 to 11am for a 3:10 flight back. This time on AlItalia. I hope to buy a new lock in the airport but bet I won’t be able to. Nothing of electronic nature (not even the camera bag) is going in the suitcase. This means my souvenirs or clothing will be stolen if it is to be. I’ll have to live with that. Never will I fly a budget airline again.

If you are wondering I never confronted the airline. There would be no point I am sure. The people at the desk would inevitably not be able to speak English and more so what are they going to do for me? Refund me money? No, I am sure not that. Secondly, if they gave me anything it would be credits for future flights. As I said, I will never fly them again. Insert expletive here. So basically I figured why infuriate myself further by getting back on a tram to the airport finding the desk and banging my head against a wall. It was about $200 between the GPS and the European maps. I will have to live with that loss. That is all. It still pisses me off but eventually I will get over it. At least the Tom Tom was available and got me to where I needed to be.