Cruise Italy: Sicily's Trapani is a port city to be savoured

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This was published 5 years ago

Cruise Italy: Sicily's Trapani is a port city to be savoured

By Brian Johnston
The corso Vittorio Emanuele in Trapani, Sicily.

The corso Vittorio Emanuele in Trapani, Sicily.Credit: Shutterstock

Trapani is an ancient place. It has been at the centre of sea trade since the Phoenicians, and ruled by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Spanish. A good port, then, to sail into on a cruise ship. Silver Muse takes me towards the coast of north-west Sicily, sun-scorched and encrusted with salt pans and backed by blue hills. Even from the ship's decks you can feel Trapani's age as we approach. Its harbour is embraced in fortified arms and an island castle like something built from Lego. Flat-topped white houses have the look of North Africa, but church domes bulge.

From a cruise ship's elevation, I eyeball rooftop saints, TV antennas and washing hung out as if like pennants for our arrival. You could film a pirate movie here, I think, as Silver Muse ties up beneath crumbling baroque palazzi. This is a raffish port, grand but seagull-screeched on a sickle-shaped peninsula. Fortified walls loom above glittering sea. Old-town streets are cool canyons carved in marble and golden stone. The colours are Mediterranean pink and green and yellow. I think I'm already a little in love.

I'm on a Silversea journey between Monte Carlo and Valletta, and this is what I like about cruising. You arrive at another port and, dizzy as a teenager, develop a new crush on a handsome new place. The cruise terminal is the size of a convenience store and in minutes I'm off the ship and enveloped in history and faded beauty. A statue of a bald and bearded Garibaldi scowls over a carpark. The town hall is topped by an Italian flag and a marble eagle. Potbellied wrought-iron balconies jut out over carved cupids entwined in vine leaves.

Trapani is a raffish port, grand but seagull-screeched on a sickle-shaped peninsula.

Trapani is a raffish port, grand but seagull-screeched on a sickle-shaped peninsula.Credit: Shutterstock

Most passengers are off on a shore excursion to hilltop Erice, but such a port as Trapani deserves to be savoured. I slink off like an errant schoolboy and into the morning fish market, where trestles are piled with rust-red squid and eels and hairy-shelled mussels. Vendors flick water over the fish so their scales shimmer in the sun. Beheaded swordfish ooze thick, crimson blood across wooden chopping boards. I have fresh tuna for lunch in a waterfront restaurant, and spaghetti alla trapanese with a cold sauce of pesto, raw tomato and unexpected chips of hot chilli, perfect for this sirocco weather.

The afternoon sizzles. I retreat into cool churches full of the dusty finger bones of holy men, and statues of gruesomely dying Christs and naked swooning saints. In the Sanctuary of the Annunciation a renowned Madonna works overtime answering the prayers of penitents. Weather-beaten women in black headscarves mutter, dropping coins with a clink into the collection box. Nearby, St Joseph holds a fat bambino in one hand and a basket in the other, as a gaggle of putti look on with amused smiles on their faces. They might be amused at the thought of a man in Sicily taking an interest in child-rearing and shopping.

As evening approaches the marble of the town hall blushes and long shadows lie across flagstones. On the main street, I inhale the aroma of coffee and perfume. Men in dark suits sit outside cafes, swivelling their heads at passing women in hair ribbons and ironed skirts. I join more locals on the seawalls, gossiping as their children play. Boats lie lopsided on the shingle. A ferry chugs in from the Egadi Islands and ties up at the wharf. Across the salt pans the sun sets, making the sea sizzle in red and violet.

Then I board Silver Muse and sail away into the Mediterranean, and already Trapani has been callously abandoned. I gaze forward from the deck, out towards Malta, ready to fall in love all over again.

TRIP NOTES

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Brian Johnston travelled as a guest of Silversea.

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traveller.com.au/italy

traveller.com.au/cruises

CRUISE

Silversea has five cruises that visit Trapani in 2019, and two in 2020. Among them is a seven-day Rome to Barcelona cruise on Silver Shadow, departing on August 3, 2019, that also visits Sorrento, Cagliari, Palma de Mallorca and Valencia. From $5760 a person. Phone 1300 306 872, see silversea.com

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