Buona Pasqua!

In Italy, Easter (Pasqua) is a huge national holiday, so big that the Monday after Easter is also a national holiday and school is cancelled! For us, that meant that we had a four day weekend and so seven of us from the program took it as an opportunity to head down to Trapani, Sicilia for a three day vacation (you know, all the studying I'm doing is highly stressful and since Italy is absolutely no fun whatsoever by any stretch of the imagination.... we desperately needed a break from the mundane... kidding - we just wanted to see Sicily). The weather wasn't quite as warm as we'd hoped, but we did manage to lay out on the beach on Friday. Since my skin had all the color drawn slowly from in during the weeks of hibernation due to blizzards, it turns out that's all I was able to do anyway (can you say - sunburnt?).

Trapani is a little town on the western coast of Sicily, which is an island off the west coast of southern Italy. It's not a very big tourist town or hot destination spot, but we picked it because Ryanair (a cheap airline that goes all over Europe) flies from Ancona (an hour from Macerata) to there. Even though towns like Palermo and Siracusa are more well-known, I liked Trapani because it was a taste of small town southern Italy (and one thing you know about me by now is that I like small towns). It's a port town with beaches, with big mountains in the background, and some delicious seafood! Also, some specialties are cous cous (with seafood it is even better than regular cous cous - and they have an entire cous cous festival) and these rice balls (which I ate twice for lunch - so good). Basically, the food is good (what's new?). And the people were much more friendly and loud in the south than they are in the central or northern regions. Not that they aren't nice there too, they are just more approachable in the south. For example, standing outside a gelateria our last night there, a woman and her two daughters just started talking to us and I got to practice my Italian (I told the little girl I liked her glittery shoes), while she got to practice her English (she's studying it in school, but she's studying British English so it's a little different). Also, we were honked at and told we were beautiful more times in three days than has ever happened in three months in Macerata.

Here's some pics of the beach (two blocks from our hostel):

Friday, the town had their Good Friday processional. Very Godfather-like (appropriate because the Mafia began in Sicily) with little "floats" and bands. But rather than a festive and jovial feeling, it was like a big funeral march. Appropriate for the holiday, I suppose, but rather odd to watch - nothing like I've ever seen before. It was long too, I only watched part of it but it supposedly went on for over five hours.

Depicting scenes from the crucifixion. 

Saturday, the seven of us took a day trip with the only other two people in our hostel to a medieval town named Erice, which sits on top of the mountains behind Trapani. Because it's in the mountains, as we took our cable car to the top, we disappeared into a fog that sometimes covers the town. It was actually really disorienting and kind of creepy, plus it was really cold and we were not dressed for it. On the upside, we went to a famous pastry shop and I ate a giant, delicious cannoli!

Cable car ride to the top!

Eerie.

Castle exploration time!

Where bad things can't happen.

Sugar coma followed promptly.

Sunday was our day to relax, and I read a book and took a walk to some ruins a little ways down the beach. We didn't really have many options of things to do, as it was Easter and almost everything was closed (in case you'd forgotten, Italy is super Catholic).

Spring flowers and random ruins!

In the early evening, the seven of us made an Easter dinner in our hostel's kitchen- complete with pasta (what else), salad, bruschetta, annnnnd deviled eggs! Eating the eggs actually made it feel like Easter!

It took imagination and creativity to make this happen. And it was probably comical to watch. It was a very small kitchen.

Then we went to bed early because we had to get to the airport by 5 AM. Which meant that we had to get up at 3:45 AM to take the bus there. While I love being places, I don't always like how difficult or long it takes to get there. Still, I really enjoyed Sicily - the weather was beautiful, the seafood was heavenly (I've been waiting for seafood for months), the people were kind, and it was so nice to relax for a few days on the beach. My next travels will take me back down to the south, and I can't wait to spend some more time in that part of Italy!