The day started bad, REALLLLLY BAAAADDD. We were up bright and early to take the boat to the most interesting of the Egades Islands, Favignana. But when I went down to the car, it was gone...
The AirBnB host had said to be careful with parking, but had not explained what she meant. Apparently, the parking is on one side certain days, and the other side other days. Now, like everywhere else in Italy, nobody seems to give a shit, and there are cars parked all day and all night on both sides of the streets, on sidewalks, just about anywhere. I guess it doesn't matter if you have a Trapani license plate. BUT if you are an out of towner, there seems to be a racket going on whereby tow trucks come by in the middle of the night and tow your car to the pound. You can't win at the game, unless you get up at 24:00 hour midnight to move your car to the other side of the street. I asked the guy at the supermarket and he threw his hands up and said to call the police. I did, and finally managed in Pidgin/Italian/Spanish/French/English to find out where it had been towed. I started on foot hoping to find a taxi, but there does not seem to be any taxis in Trapani, at least not as early as 8 in the morning... All tourist info locations were closed. I finally asked a cop who pointed me in the direction. Luckily, the closed Tourist Info had a map on the outside of the door, and I found the street, a tiny dead end alley near the cimetary way down off the beach road. It took me over an hour to walk there in freezing wind, and find the place after asking my way a few times. There was the car, in a tiny garage with a couple of tow trucks parked in front. I paid my 36 Euros fine (I expected worse), and was on my way back to the apartment fuming mad...We finally managed to take the 11 o'clock hydrofoil, and were in Favignana after a 20 minutes or so slightly bumpy ride:
The Island was pretty much the fiefdom of the Flovio Family, who built the largest "tonarre" (tuna fishing and canning establishment) on the Meditarreanian in the 19th century, processing 10,000 tons of tuna a year. I was expecting to be open, as the guide book said it had been restored and made into a museum with impressive video installations, etc... Well, wrong info, the place looks was closed, and looked abandoned.
There was another small half ruined "tonarre" down the street, with an old boat in the courtyard. The gate was almost busted up, and I would have loved to break in there to take pictures of the two huge hangars on the water where the fishing boats unloaded the catch. Probably a bad idea, so I just shot pictures some through the gate:
There was not much else to see, at least without renting a car, or riding scooters, so we just had lunch on the main square and took the boat back at 2:30.
We took a stroll down the main street of the Trapani old town, and looked at some beautiful coral and silver work (boxes, frames,jewelry, etc...), but it was all expensive, and I really don't want the Fish and Wildlife guys to take anything more from me when I get home...
We had a quiet dinner with music, at the light of an antique original 1981 Artemide Design Floor Lamp with a car headlight:
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