Zingaro Natural Reserve

Couldn't believe we slept in to 7:30 this morning.  Time to get up and moving.  Andre and I went into town to find a croissant, the apartment left us a chocolate cake for breakfast that didn't look the best, croissant is in order.

Back to the apartment and we pack up and head off to Zingaro Natural Reserve.  This is the first reserve in Sicily.  It is here because there such an uproar when a road was going to be built along this coast that a reserve as made.  What an amazing area.  It is 7km hike each way, we walked in and back so 14 km over lots of rocky ups and downs, but oh the views made it so worth it.  We had stopped in a little village right outside the reserve to get sandwiches, so after the 7km mark we stopped for sandwiches.

One last walk on cobblestone streets.

One spot along the way had lots of quarries

Getting ready for a busy day, beach right outside the park

Would make a nice B&B

Total time spent on the hike was about 5 hours.  There are lots of little museums along the way, and information about the flowers and fauna.  You could easily spend the entire day here visiting beaches and hiking.  It would be incredibly hot in the summer though, but the beaches would be nicer to use.

Parts of the paths were definitely not wheelchair friendly, so many ups and downs over rocks

One of the little museums along the way

Absolutely gorgeous water, a few people in swimming

A picture in the museum of making the pasta that originates from here

Beaches are not sandy here, lots of stones

Lunch break at this beach

Demonstration of how tuna was caught 

after 5 hours happy to see the tunnel ahead where we started our hike

After the hike we move on to Trapani where we will be spending the next 3 nights.  We have a nice big apartment here, it will work well for us.

Off to pick up a few groceries for breakfast and some wine for tonight.  Looking forward to the Easter pageants that this city is known for, they start at midnight tonight and go for 24 hours.  We will see how much sleep we get, and how many times we go out to watch pageants.

Drive to Trapani

Drove by Erice on top in the clouds

Ron had picked a place for supper, Nancy was in charge of navigation this time, found the place no problem, the place was the problem.  They had no menu, just some things you could order that were precooked and some meat and cheese platters.  We will move on, may need to take finding places to eat job away from Ron.

We did end up at a good restaurant with an even better waiter.  Prices were fantastic, plus they had spritz!  We tried some of the Busiate pasta, which we had seen in the museum earlier today, which is the local type of pasta.  It was really long curly type spaghetti, kinda.

Busiate pasta

Miniatures of the procession we will see tomorrow