Southern Italy, Day V: Segesta and Erice

January 29th, Day 5:

After another early-morning meeting at the bus, we travelled to two awesome places in Sicily: Segesta and Erice. First up was Segesta, the site of an ancient Greek temple that was one of the first things we learned about in good old Architecture History I freshman year. It was a pretty long drive to get to our destinations on the west coast of Sicily... so of course, I passed out for a bit on the bus. When I woke up, I took some pictures of the gorgeous countryside out the window.





Wisconsin? Northeastern Iowa? Not even close.








Our first view of the temple... looking like a crouching animal in the bushes.






Almost there...







And... the money shot. You can't really get a sense of the scale from a textbook or Powerpoint presentation, it was even more massive than I expected. It would probably take about 5 people extending their arms to reach around one of the columns.
For an animated (ooooo....) summary of the components of a typical Greek temple, here's a handy website:
http://http://www.usfca.edu/classes/AuthEd/Greek%20Temple/construction.htm#bottom



The obligatory "plant close-up with a blurred background" shot... because a little pretension never hurt anybody.


















A corner of the temple pediment, high above.











The long side of the temple.











Here is the "inside" of the temple, facing the back end.








Another inside shot, towards the front. Please disregard the tourists.







The temple, in all its huge-ness.







One of the great things about the temple at Segesta is that it hasn't been overtaken by development... it isn't like the Colosseum or the Leaning Tower where the pictures have to trick you into thinking that it is in the middle of some idyllic countryside, this actually is out in the middle of God's country. Except for the shop at the bottom of the hill, all that's around are rolling green hills, fields of wildflowers, and rocky mountains... completely beautiful.





































Adamo! at the Segesta gift shop. I decided to forgo the olive oil and get a Snickers bar instead... it was pretty glorious after not having had one for so long.








Before I came to Sicily, I thought cactus was native to the southwestern US and nowhere else... boy was I wrong. It grows like a weed here, completely covering some of the hillsides and cliff faces that we saw.





After we left Segesta, we headed towards Erice, a mountaintop town on the coast above the city of Trapani. The bus ride up the rock on the left was enough to give you vertigo.






The bus kept climbing and climbing up a narrow switchback road and Trapani kept falling away below us... it was a pretty amazing view.







Another shot, from even higher up the mountain.











We parked the bus and arranged to meet back at the bus in several hours. To say that Erice is a sleepy town is an understatement... in some places, it seemed almost deserted. Apparently it is bustling and active during the summer tourist season, but apparently not at the end of January... many of the shops and restaurants were closed, and the shopkeepers that were open seemed a bit listless. Regardless, Erice as a town is pretty fascinating... I have never been anywhere else like it. It is hard to describe... it is very rocky, and has texture everywhere. There are interesting places at every turn... impossibly small alleyways, sudden steep hills, intricately paved streets... it was a great place to explore. I set out with Rose and Lauren Goetz, and our first order of business was to find a place to eat. After some searching, we saw a sign pointing down an alleyway for a place called Ulysses, so we followed the alleyway... to find a sign pointing down another alleyway... and so on and so on. We probably made about 5 zigs and 8 zags, seeing a Ulysses sign at each one, until we finally found the restaurant.

The restaurant! The three of us were the only ones there initially... then Lauren and Dan wandered in. Followed by Erin and Marco shortly after them... and then Stanley, Judy, and Dave after that. The food was good, I had a small steak because I was almost pasta-ed out by that point in the trip.
















Rose and Dan, looking really happy!











After lunch, we headed back up to the main road where we had come from when we saw the restaurant sign.























Back up on the main road, we took a right and ended up at the door of an old monastery, so we walked inside. For all intents and purposes, it was abandoned, so we wandered around through the different levels of rooms, most of which were overgrown, taking pictures as we went. It was a little eerie, but pretty cool.


















This is a room that was almost completely overtaken by plants and vines, with no roof and cool window gratings.










"This wall has CHARACTER!" This was just before a man appeared from nowhere and followed us out of the building. Very mysterious...










After our monastery adventure, we found this amazing lookout point near the parking lot. Amazing... you could see for what seemed like forever.






Rose on the edge at the overlook.









Rose again... "Good luck exploring the infinite abyss!"











After the overlook, we wandered around the edge of the city. This stairway took us up to...









... this church.











An intricate window in an Erice (Ericean?) church.








A path through the woods below the main road, which would eventually take us to the city wall.










The city wall! This was really fun to climb on, and you could walk for a long way on it. It was a pretty steep drop on either side, which made it pretty exciting.









The view of the forest and the sea beyond from atop the city wall.












This was the point where we couldn't go any farther on the wall...
that would have been a rough climb.






A weathered set of street signs.








A really friendly dog that started to follow us around.








What a ham...








We also had some sketching to do in Erice, in addition to getting kicked out of ancient monasteries and playing with dogs. Here is the alley that I took a street section through.









An awesome balcony near the alleyway I drew.







After we left Erice, we went back down the mountain and stopped briefly at this windmill by the Trapani salt flats. When we got back to Palermo, we watched some high-quality Italian television, and then we went to the same restaurant as the night before and had some awesome food once again. That was the end of day 5 of our trip... tomorrow would take us to Cefalu.