Escape from Palermo!

March 19, 2023

To Castellammare del Golfo

I didn’t take a lot of photos today; it just wasn’t that photogenic a day. I did stick my phone out the window of our room:

The church across the street is open for Mass this morning

Building addition, Palermo style. See the glass wall at the top?

A few photos I wished I’d been quick enough to take: at a particularly chaotic intersection, the sign advertising complete funeral services for 2200€; the traffic jam at the entrance to a cemetery around 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning; the sign telling us we were officially out of the craziness of Palermo; the sign for a place called Bar Lume with the same name and logo as the Bar Lume in the TV show of that name, which is set on the coast of Tuscany near Pisa but filmed on Elba (we visited the site last year https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/italy2020/elba-day-ride/).

We picked up some lunch supplies at a Conad grocery in Cinisi and finally found a place to sit down and eat it in Trappeto, a village that’s trying very hard to be welcoming to residents and visitors.

Back on our bikes, we found a few challenges but were quite happy to discover that the bridge that had been washed out has been replaced, temporarily I think, given that its elevation is quite a bit lower than that of the old bridge and its alignment is different. In any case, no need to detour on the much higher Viadotto San Bartolomeo.

It started as an unpaved road along the beach, but deteriorated to this for about 150 m. Then, where it should have continued into Balestrate, it became one-way in the other direction. Luckily there was an escape route without much backtracking.

Past the innocent-looking river, there was a sign about roadworks ahead and possibly a road closure (we never know for sure when we’re trying to decipher Italian road signs) but it turned out to be passable if you were on foot or on a bicycle.

There’s a path for pedestrians just left of the orange fencing, below the dirt bank. We rode through.

Just a few wrong turns in town before we found our B&B. The last 30 metres are always the hardest!

Note to self: it may be only March but it’s sunny here in Sicily. Use sunscreen or you will get burnt!

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Today's ride: 72 km (45 miles)
Total: 102 km (63 miles)

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