Trapani, Sicily, cancelled due to bad weather

Well our departure from Castellamare di Stabia (castle in the water in Stabia) which I discovered today was the home town of Al Capone, was eventful as nature took a sudden turn for the worst, as the Captain said ''It is November and you can expect this type of storms''. High winds and 4 meter waves (14 feet) with swells and rain makes for interesting navigation.

We sped out of port and right into the storm, the Captain put out the stabilizers which come as standard equipment on modern ships to mitigate the movement at sea. Nonetheless there is a gentle rocking and shaking, I slept through most of it. By 10 am we were approaching Trapani Port entrance in frightful weather, downpour, high winds and huge waves under dark skies.

Trapani afternoon stop in Port is cancelled due to bad weather, the Captain is quite concerned, we cannot enter port, a tanker ship in front of us is blocking the way unable to make it into Port. The weather in the next 8 hours is going to get much worse, expecting 10 meter waves (30 feet) and so the Captain has decided to make time by speeding along to Barcelona, where we can expect better weather. The Casino is open and so are the bars, so we are going to drink and sing shanties like the sailors on the good ship Pinafore.

Trapani has to be seen in good weather, lovely town but not in the rain.

We are now crossing in a loop to the North and then East of Spain trying to avoid the worst of the storm coming our way. We have been told not to go on the decks because the winds are very strong at 45 Km per hour and easily can cause injury by falling on wet deck surfaces. It is sunny now with a few clouds and 20 C. We have to occupy ourselvers with reading and other activities.

This evening Tuesday 5 November we are passing south of Sardegna and will continue North all night and day tomorrow towards Barcelona. We have picked up speed and it is very choppy, quite a few people suffer from motion sickness. The bad weather should end by 3pm tomorrow Wednesday 6 November.

Port entrance to Trapani, we are not getting any closer and turning around. 

The sea and high waves, impressive

Erik Satie, Gnosienne no.5 and travel

I really like this quiet piano music by Erik Satie.




In ten days, just a few days away, we will be flying to Rome, Eternal beauty, for a few days to visit with friends. Then we board our cruise to the Amalfi Coast unto Sicily and then Spain. We will continue our trip via an hotel-train from Seville to Paris and then on the EuroStar to London to see friends.

We have tickets to see the new exhibit on the life of Emperor Augustus, Pater Patriae, who died on 19 August 14 AD some 2000 years ago. Much of our traditions and laws in the Western World we owe to him.  On his death he became a god by a vote of the Senate of Rome. http://english.scuderiequirinale.it/categorie/exhibition-augusto-rome

There is also a new exhibit on Cleopatra who visited Rome but was never allowed to enter the City itself and lived in Trastevere, Romans did not like foreign potentates much and she was said to have bad morals, thus offending the matrons of Rome. There are many more wonderful exhibits, will see how many we can see while in the Citta Aeterna.
http://chiostrodelbramante.it/en/info/cleopatra_roma_e_lincantesimo_dellegitto/

Rome's seaport is at Civitavecchia some 50 km away the old port of Ostia is no more since the airport is now located in that vicinity at Fiumicino. It takes about one hour to get there, so we will be staying in Trastevere which is closest to the exit out of Rome without having to cross the city.

We have not been to the Amalfi Coast so our first stop is Sorrento, then across to Trapani on the western tip of Sicily where they make excellent wines. A city we know well and where we have bought much wine in the past. Then we will sail for Barcelona, another city we know well and we wish to visit again the famous cathedral still under construction of Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926), La Sagrada Familia, it is spectacular architecture. http://www.sagradafamilia.cat

We will then sail down to the home town of the Borgia Family, Valencia then to Gibraltar and up the Guadalqivir River to Seville. We will leave the cruise at that point and proceed to Granada to see by night the Alhambra and its gardens. http://www.alhambradegranada.org/en/

Our hotel-train will take us to Madrid and on to Paris. Hotel-trains offer the same luxury as an hotel with full dining car and multi-course gourmet meals and wines. We will change in Paris for the Euro-Star which will take us to London via the Chunnel. http://www.chunnel.com

Looking forward to this wonderful trip and seeing so many friends in the process.

Automne, Autunno, Autumn

We were able to have dinner outside from 21 June to 31 August this year, a short period of time but we love this tradition of dining on our terrace looking at the Rideau Canal.

Since 1 September the weather has been sunny but cool and in the evening chilly. The days are noticeably shorter now so we are slowly moving towards Autumn.

The word Autumn in English comes from old French Automne and it seems that prior to the 16th century the word Harvest was much in use since most people lived on the land and Harvest meant that time of the year, Season, when most food is harvested. Only as of the 16th century when more people moved to Cities and learnt to read and write did the word Autumn gain prominence.

With Autumn new activities take place, Thanksgiving falls on Sunday 13 October, meaning that we decorate with various types of coloured corn, pumpkins and a variety of squashes. Last year I found a pumpkin which was a bluish silver colour, a heritage variety. There is a lot of so called Heritage vegetables on the markets now and many people love this new choice. Just outside Ottawa, the Gatineau Park has spectacular colours and it is wonderful to drive up into the hills and on a sunny day see the multi-coloured trees.

Of course many will cook a turkey and have the traditional stuffing and vegetables, potatoes, brussels sprouts, carrot, turnip and squash. I do not know what we will do. It all depends who is in town during this long weekend.

We are booked for our cruise in November from Rome to Seville, with stops in Sorrento, Trapani, Barcelona, Valencia, Gibraltar, then across the Strait of Gibraltar and along the Guadalquivir river to Seville. We also plan a side trip to Granada. This cruise is to celebrate our 35 Anniversary. We had such a great cruise last year from Amsterdam to St-Petersburg and Stockholm through the Baltic Sea. This will be our gift to each other and a wonderful way to celebrate. AZAMARA is tailoring the cruise for our anniversary and giving us little extras to make it memorable.

This will be our second cruise with AZAMARA, smaller ships, called mid-size with 700 passengers and higher level of amenities and service. The food was excellent and the wine list impressive, I also liked the fact that they poured drinks not measure them, so you got a nice stiff drink to make any sailor proud. We have never been on the super-size ships carrying thousands of passengers and I do not think we would like it. Also from a point of safety, I prefer a smaller ship. We were also able to dock in town where larger cruise ships had to dock often far away in sea ports. One final point that sold me on AZAMARA was the number of Canadians on crew on board, a nice touch.

Azamara Quest

Trapani, Sicilia

Today we explored Trapani, (pop. 68,000), a small town which sits on the edge of western Sicily, occupied by Spain from 1282 until 1860. Once populated by numerous Spanish aristocrats whose palaces and private churches line Corso Vittorio Emmanuelle and Via Garibaldi, the old town juts out into the Tyrrhenian Sea on three sides. The wind is pretty strong and so is the sunshine, it feels almost as if you are out to sea with water any which way you look. 

Trapani today has this look of sad melancholy, an old town which went through periods of boom and bust and now is experiencing a new boom, thanks of giant cruise ships stopping here daily.  The town has gentrified itself in some parts, but other parts are still waiting for renovation. The old streets are narrow like that of an North African Kasbah allowing only a donkey or pedestrians to pass.

Trapani is a fishing port, known for its excellent fish and sea food, some of the best fish in the whole of the Mediterranean can be found here in its restaurants, not to mention good quality sardines and blood red tuna a local specialty. Sea Salt production is the other industry. Sicily also boast a large variety of wines, many of high quality, the enotecas allow you to discover many wonderful wines including the sweet wines like the Passita.

Today we visited in the decommissioned church of St-Agostino an exhibit on a local tradition, the Misteri, they are statues created by local craftsmen and artisans representing the different actors in the stations in the Passion of Christ and carried around town during Easter week in day long processions.

I often wondered about those statues, they are life size and are mounted on altars surrounded by long processional candles. The exhibit showed how all this is made and how light it is in reality. The statues head, hands and feet are made of cork wood, very light and easy to sculpt, then covered with papier maché and painted, the rest of the body, clothing etc, is made of canvas shaped and glued and then painted. So what looks like a heavy wood statue is in fact nothing more that a few pieces of cork wood and canvas. It is then mounted on a cart with wheels and pulled by men who belong to a religious confraternity through city streets with marching band and banners, local parish priest and Altarboys.

                                   Santa Lucia 

                                 Saint Joseph

Many of the churches in Trapani are now permanently closed, many have been abandoned and like the church of the Carmine next to our hotel, it is opened a few hours a day enough to collect a few euros in the hope that maybe they can restore it one day. The churches in Trapani were built in the 16 and 17^th century by noble families, employing artists and craftsmen of the time. But nowadays only the Cathedral of San Lorenzo is fully functioning, all other churches have been closed or turned into exhibit space.

 Dome of San Lorenzo Cathedral Trapani, with its green majolica tile roof.

One church that did look closed, was in fact opened today, Santa Maria del Soccoro the inside have seen better days but today it was decorated with huge arrangements of white roses placed all over the church, the scent of the roses made the whole building come alive. A wedding was taking place and we arrived just a few minutes prior to the event. It had an air of surreal, old decaying baroque church building of an age gone by, decorated with a multitude of flowers which will last only a day.

We had lunch in a Enoteca-Trattoria on Via Giudecca 32,described as the best in Italy by numerous guides like Michelin and Gambero Rosso and the magazine Saveur, see March 2011 issue. The owner of Cantina Siciliana, Pino Maggiore is charming and very knowledgeable on wines.   

We had a wonderful lunch of Sardines in oil which are then breaded and fried, served very hot, it is basically made fresh when you order it. Then I had a freshly made pasta called Busiate di Pesto alla Trapanese, a very local dish, Excellent! See the website www.cantinasiciliana.it

Will had red shrimps ceviche and then Swordfish alla Putanesca in tomatoes and capers. Our Sicilian wine was a dry white called Baaria with a beautiful golden colour.

After the meal we spoke with Pino and asked him to recommend some wines we could purchase and send home. He recommended Baaria, Cutti and Quojane, we did not know the last one, so he opened a bottle for us, wise move as we bought 2 cases of it.

This evening we are going down to Via Carolina which ends literally into the Tyrrhenian Sea without warning, the sun sets at the end of that street over the water. There is a little enoteca called Trapani e Vini and friends recommended it to us. Tomorrow we will visit Erice just 10 Km from Trapani. As I sit here gazing out at the sea through the large window of my room, I imagine that in the distant horizon I see the coast of Spain and Gibraltar.