Back on our feet, Sandy and I wanted to see a little more of Western Sicily.   A major industry along the coastline between Marsala and Trapani is the harvesting of sea salt.  While we must have a dozen different sea salts back home I had never given a lot of thought to how it is gathered.

It is a mesmerizing process.  In salt production from seawater, the natural elements collaborate with human ingenuity to yield one of the world's most essential minerals.  It requires patience as the evaporation process advances at its own pace and then a fast and furious race to harvest the salt before the September rains arrive and simply dissolve away the product.

Piles of Sea Salt ready for the table

Here, just south of Trapani, the serene expanse of salt beds were nestled along the sun-kissed shores with the azure waters of the Mediterranean stretching as far as the eye could see. Here, the age-old practice of salt harvesting unfolds, blending ancient tradition with modern techniques.

First, the seawater is carefully channeled into vast, shallow salt pans, where it basks under the Mediterranean sun. For hundreds of years moving the water into the successively saltier pans was done by windmills turning Archimedean screws. Now it is done by diesel powered pumps, more efficient perhaps, but at the cost of lost romance.  As the sun's radiant warmth touches the water's surface, the alchemy begins. Over time, the water begins to evaporate, leaving behind a delicate crust of salt crystals.

Salt pans along the Mediterranean shore

One of the old windmills (now houses the Museo di Sale)

The windmill sits on an island in the middle of the salt pans

Slowly but surely as more seawater is added to the evaporation beds, these crystals grow and multiply, forming intricate patterns across the surface of the salt pans. With each passing day, the concentration of salt in the remaining water increases, until finally, it reaches saturation point.

At this critical juncture, skilled salt workers step in, delicately raking the crystalline salt from the surface of the pans. They gather the precious crystals into mounds, where they will undergo further drying and refining.

In the end, what remains is not just a simple mineral (NaCl) that the world needs, but a testament to the artistry and resilience of those who have tamed the sea in order to extract its bounty.

Our guide, this is another guy Sandy thinks is very handsome.  I'm beginning to worry

He gave us the tour in English with a heavy accent.  He supplemented his speech about his family's business with highly effective pantomime. We understood everything.

The old gears for the windmill

The windmill was multipurpose. It turned the archimedes screw that moved the water to different salt pans, and it turned the mill to ground the salt to a medium coarse consistency

After viewing the salt beds Sandy and I returned to our home base of Marsala (it truly is a charming town), where a different kind of tradition awaited us. In the warm glow of the setting sun, we joined locals and pilgrims alike in observing the poignant Via della Croce, the Way of the Cross, held the Thursday before Easter. We staked a position that was along the path that the procession would follow.  We were deeply moved by the reenactment of Christ's journey to Calvary.  The sincerity of those in the procession was obvious. They were not just in a parade, they were revering Christ as he suffered his last days.  And the thousands of people that lined the streets to watch were equally reverent as they stood in silence as the procession passed.  A very poignant reminder of the enduring faith and cultural heritage of this vibrant region of Catholicism.

We all had our own ways of waiting for the procession to begin

The first "Christ" was the only one that did not wear a mask.  He was happy-go-lucky as he and his disciples lead the procession depicting their trip into Jerusalem 

Thousand of characters in costumes

Christ with the crown of thorns

Elaborate staging

The final "Christ" bearing the cross

Huge crowds all along the street.  They were silent.

This was like a play, each portrayal of Christ would stop and reenact for the crowd in front of them, then they would move a little further down the road where they would perform again.  So it was like watching a play, except that each act would appear before you and then move down the road for a new audience.

This shows the mask of the final Christ

An icon from the Mother Church followed the procession

While walking around Marsala Sandy and I visited a couple of the churches.  I especially liked the rundown Church of Purgatory.  I am afraid I may not see heaven, too many youthful indiscretions, but there is still the off-chance that I might sneak into purgatory, therefore a prayer at this church and a lit votive candle certainly can’t hurt.  Sandy disagrees, to her, it is heaven or hell and she wants the immediate decision, no waiting around.  We also enjoyed two iconic Sicilian treats.  Sandy had some of her gelato and I had an arancina which is a deep fried rice ball with ragù inside. 

The church of Purgatory

A faded picture on the front of the church

Inside the Mother Church

In the Mother Church, this crucifix was created in 1492, the same year Columbus sailed for the Americas

More of the church's grandeur

Arancina:  Saffron rice, ragù, deep-fried

Island Hopping 2024: Marsala, A day off

Sandy and I, still fighting colds, decided to hang around the house one more day.  Between resting, reading and eating some tagliatelle I did little beyond redesigning the next few days of site seeing.  

Sandy, on the other hand, added laundry to that list of things to do.  She is working with what must be the world’s smallest washing machine.  In fact, it took a long time for her to figure out how to even put dirty clothes in the washer.  No dryer, she hangs the clothes (inside) to dry.  

A very compact washing machine

How do we get the clothes into the washer

Of course, the super double secret trap door in the washer drum

Sandy's dryer

At some point in the laundry process, Sandy dumped about 2 inches of water on my bathroom floor.  I don’t know how she did it, but she HAS been sick.  She tells me “quit whining, now you have a nice clean bathroom floor and you're welcome”.

I've never seen a cleaner bathroom floor

Tagliatelle for dinner

Island Hopping 2024: Marsala, Fighting Colds, Chicken Marsala

Once in a while on long trips like this the same things that afflict us at home, will also happen on the road.  For the last several days Sandy and I have felt colds coming on.  Finally today it reached the point where we felt it better to forgo some site-seeing and just stay around the cottage where we could keep warm and dry, and get plenty of rest.  The math on this, is pretty simple, our travels will last a little over 100 days.  So each day represents about 1% of our travels.  So giving up a day or two to get a little healthier is usually a fair trade off.  Today we stayed at home to try to fight these colds.  I don’t know where we got it, but Sandy is blaming the Pope for the way we were stuffed into the Sistine Chapel like sardines.

So that we did do something I did go to the market and pick up things needed to make Chicken Marsala.  Staying here in Marsala it almost seemed obligatory. 

The chicken breast, we later cut it in half horizontally making four thin slices.  We then pounded them out to uniform thickness and cut those pieces into smaller pieces

Flour for dredging, salt, pepper, some dried herbs we found in the cupboard

The Olive Oil

Melting in some butter

Dredging the chicken in the flour

Dredged Chicken

Sizzling chicken

Sandy dicing the garlic cloves

Sautéeing the Mushrooms

Now the cream sauce, the store had no heavy cream so we used a combination of regular cream and cream cheese

Of course we added Marsala at every step of the preparation

Our Chicken Marsala in the pan

Our chicken Marsala on the plate.

Island Hopping 2024: Marsala, Parco Archeologico di Selinunte, Sicilian Fruit.

 We have both orange trees and lemon trees on the grounds of this cottage.  We made good use of both.

Lemon Tree is very pretty and lemon flower is sweet but the fruit of the poor lemon tree is impossible to eat

Unless of course Sandy makes her homemade lemonade with that fruit

Oranges in the tree

Oranges in the glass

The Greeks started settling city-states on Sicily in the 8th century BC.  While these Sicilian-Greeks may have been closely aligned with a city-state on the mainland of Greece, they were in no way vassals of the mainland cities.  Greeks in Sicily reached their zenith during the 5th and 4th centuries BC.  Following the First Punic War (264-241 BC) the Roman Republic emerged as the dominant power in the region. At which time Sicily became a Roman province marking the end of Greek rule of the island.  

Today Sandy and I visited the site of one of those early Greek city-states, Selinunte.  On walking into the archeological park we were immediately awestruck by the sight of the Eastern Agora.  It is a reconstruction using the materials from the rubble of the building.  Modern archeologists dismiss these reconstructions, like Knossos, but I believe it helps us non-archeologists to understand what all the piles of rubble meant, and to better grasp how great was the Greek settlement of Sicily. 

The Temple of the Eastern Agora as we first saw it

From behind the Temple of the Eastern Agora

This picture puts in perspective how massive the columns were, and this is the smaller structure

Inside the Temple

This is the base (I think) of one of the columns of the largest Temple in the Eastern Agora, again comparing it to me, gives perspective on how huge it is

This temple is the largest one here, and one of the largest in all of the Grecian world.  Again compare me to the diameter of the column

This Temple would have stood as high as a ten story building

Today it is a pile of rubble but when it was standing it was as long as a football field 

We then moved on to the Acropolis a little over a mile away.  Columns here have not been reconstructed, however, work is done to keep them from tumbling over.  We were mostly by ourselves up here and as I walked around the back I was completely alone in the shadow of the Temple of Apollo.  I could imagine the construction of the temple and of the religious rites that took place there.  I could see across the valley where the foundations of thousands of residences and work shops could be seen.  I could imagine the people of that time going about their lives and how they would be amazed had they known that it would someday all come to an end.  And that  brought me back to the Temple. What about the god Apollo.  Did he just slink away?  Is he still here waiting to be re-exaulted?  Did he never exist?  Did he exist only in the consciousness of these people and when they died, so did he?  A place like this makes your mind work harder than it normally has to.

Reliefs that are carved into the Metopes that run across the top of the columns

Apollo's Temple from across the valley

This clay sculpture found in the rubble is 2,700 years old

The myth of Actaeon the hunter being attacked by his own dogs.  This happened because he violated the space of the gods

The part of Apollo's temple that is still standing

Foundations of the house and work shops of the people who lived in Selinunte

After two complete months on the road, we were ready. Give these guys a Michelin Star!