Spring Break Fun under the Sicilian Sun!

In case anyone was still wondering what I did for the second half of my spring break here, and the title didn't clue you in well enough - I'll tell you -  I went to Sicily! 

According to my very scholarly geographic knowledge, Sicily is the little oddly shaped ball that the high heeled boot (also know as Italy)  is kicking. It's technically still a part of Italy, but in my opinion, is very different from the rest of the country 

So, early Thursday morning I left with 6 other girls to catch a train to Pisa, and then a flight to Trapani, where we would be staying.  It was a lot of fun to be able to travel with a group of girls, and just be silly and have fun.  I knew most of them, but a couple I had just met and had a great time getting to know better.  This weekend was all about just chilling out and relaxing - a good phrase to use to describe it might be "chillaxin".   (One of the many new words and phrases I learned over the long weekend)

We arrived in windy, but beautiful Trapani around noon on Thursday where we proceeded to lounge around on the pavement outside the airport in the sun while we waited for our bus to come to take us into the town, about a half and hours ride away.  Once we got into the town, we went to our bed and breakfast/hostel.  Long story short here, we ended up getting moved to a different location where we could all stay together.  The place was amazing.  It was like an apartment, with a kitchen, a living room, two bathrooms and three huge bedrooms with queen sized beds. It worked out so well, because we had thought that we'd be in separate rooms, but thankfully because of plumbing issues in our first hostel location, we all ended up in the same building.  This place was like no other hostel/B&B I had ever been in before.  It was super great too because now we were able to cook lots of meals right there at our place and so we saved a lot of money by not having to go out a lot for dinner and whatnot.

So, the first day, we went out for lunch and got well fueled for our first day in Sicily.  We found this great little restaurant that had a fixed menu for lunch all for only 10 euro, and it came with SO much food.  We got LOTS of bread - which was wonderful in itself because this was the first time that we'd been in Italy and not had to eat "Tuscan" bread, which has NO salt and therefore NO flavor, which is all they have in Florence.  So it was really nice to have a good, flavorful bread. We even packaged some up in a napkin and took it in a girls bag... I don't know if that counts as stealing, but I feel like bread is a part of the meal that you're paying for, so why not get all your moneys worth, right? And on top of that we all got a first course (pasta) and a second (a meat dish) and a side ( salad/potatoes) SO much food, but SO good. Regardless, I felt like I was ready to be rolled off to the beach when we were done eating. 

The beach was AMAZING though. Not super hot, and very windy and dirty, but there was still sand, sun, and waves, so I thought it was great.  Here's some photos of our first day and some of our first moments playing in the sand.  

We found lots of jelly fishies on the beach too, but were careful of course to not step on them, I'd hate to have gotten stung on my first day.

We spent a lot of time that first day just hanging around the water and exploring the town.  I went out again too later that night to see the beautiful sunset on the water.  Such a gorgeous sight! 

The next morning everyone took advantage of being able to sleep in and so we just had a lazy morning relaxing and hanging out in the morning sun that came in straight onto our little terrace.  Our accommodations also included "breakfast vouches" at a cafe a few blocks away, which meant each morning we would walk there and get cappuccinos and brioches for breakfast.  It was wonderful and I was definitely spoiled by being able to get a coffee and a pastry for 4 mornings in a row. There were so many choices too, I never even had to eat the same thing twice! Nutella, cream, apple cinnamon... I was in pastry heaven here!

Friday was our first full day, and half of us decided to hang around the beach and sunbathe.  The other half, myself included, decided to go on a hike.  One of the girls we were with had seen this "mountain" in the distance earlier that morning when she had gone for a run and she told herself she wanted to climb it. I of course, wanted to go too.  I didn't bring any tennis shoes to Sicily though, all I had were danskos, and I knew I couldn't hike in those, so I borrowed some shoes from another girl... well, I don't really know if  you could call them shoes, but they were better than what I had, and I really wanted to go hiking, so I gave them a shot.  They worked out pretty well for the most part, I just looked really silly and thankfully only got one blister, I ended up walking back barefoot, but it actually felt pretty good, so that was alright.  So, merely hours later four of us found ourselves trekking up this mountain.   Even though there was no path, and we ended up bushwhacking our entire way up, scraping our legs the whole time, it was so worth it. The view was phenomenal!  Truly a great way to spend a couple of hours!  I had no idea how sunny it really was however though until I got back to the hostel, and I definitely got VERY sunburnt on that hike. I'm STILL peeling, one week later.   

Once we got back down we met up with the other girls and went back to the hostel to make some food because we were all very hungry.  Certainly hiking, and apparently suntanning too, takes a lot out of a girl.   

Again, we all just hung out that night and didn't do too much, because that's what this trip really was all about, just relaxing and having fun.  

The next morning we all slept in again, still enjoying the sun and the "free" breakfast from the cafe.  We took a walk around the town a little bit and looked into taking a ferry/boat across the water to go over to an islands just about 30 minutes away.  Not everyone wanted to go, but I ended up going with another girl.  We acually tried to leave about three different times, but they kept canceling the trips across because of "bad" weather, so we decided to go eat some lunch and checked back later in the afternoon.  Thankfully they had started sending out boats again, so we hopped the next one and 30 minutes later I arrived, feeling very seasick and thankful to be back in land.  

This island, however, in all honestly, was a pretty big disappointment.  Everything in the town was closed, and there was really nothing to do there. Never the less, we were stuck here for the next two hours before the next boat was scheduled to leave back to Sicily.  So, we walked around a little bit, took some photos, and then took a nap on some benches in a little "park".  Had I to do it over again, I'd say it was NOT worth the wonderful 20 euro rocky voyage across the waters, but, oh well, live and learn!

The trip back was much nicer, a lot smoother and seemed to pass much quicker for me as well. 

Once we got back we all went out and got pizzas and brought them back to the apartment and hung out more and chatted about the days events, or lack thereof...

The next day, Sunday, was an early day for us all, because one of the girls who was with us had to catch and earlier flight out because she had a class to go to Monday morning.  We dropped her off at the bus stop at around 6:30 AM and then went back to our little cafe to get our much needed morning coffees.  We decided to take advantage of the fact that we still had a lot of time left in the day so, a few hours later, around 8 or 9 AM we hopped on a bus to Palermo, a larger more city like town a couple of hours away.  There were some nice things to see there.  We found lots of little markets in the streets and we even bought a bunch of fresh strawberries and ate them all while we were walking around the town. I have another funny shoe story here too...   This is actually a pretty good one too, believe it or not. 

So, you see, all along, for the two plus months that I've been here in Italy, I've been telling myself, NO shoes Emily, NO shoes.  And it's been really hard because I LOVE shoes and there's SO many cute shoes here. But I hadn't gotten any still, and I was actually feeling pretty proud of myself for that.  But, since I didn't come to Sicily prepared for warm, sandy beach weather at all, I found myself borrowing lots of clothes and other things from the girls. I also happened to be borrowing a pair of flip flops from one girl.  I'm not the greatest at wearing flip flops, really, at least not until I've seasoned my feet into wearing them. I guess that little spot between my toes is just too sensitive to having material between then all of a sudden like that. Apparently,  I have to work my way into flops,I don't know, but I think I shocked my feet here in Sicily by wearing this girls plastic Old Navy flops because my feet were just starting to really, really hurt and bleed a little, to be honest.  So, I told the girls if they saw any cheap shoes in these markets to let me know.  Well, not two seconds after these words came out of my mouth, but what did I run across.  A little lady selling "frocs" - fake crocs.... so, long story short, even though I haven't really made this a short story, basically I spent the last 2 months avoiding buying all these cute shoes and what do I do in Sicily? I break down and by a bright yellow pair of foam shoes for 6 euro... way to go me. Oh well, at least they are comfortable.  I felt a little like big bird, but it's alright, I didn't mind, and the girls seemed to be okay with me still walking near them as well too, so I suppose all was well.

We caught the bus back to Trapani just as it started to rain and then just spent the rest of the rainy and windy night in our place for the last night.  We ended up playing cards till almost 1AM only taking a break to make a midnight (literally, it was past 12) snack of pasta and bread.  This was was actually lots of fun, until 5 AM rolled around and we had to be up and out and on our way to the airport to catch our Monday morning flight back to Pisa.

So, we ran past our cafe early that morning, grabbing some fresh brioches, hot out of their oven and hopped on the bus back to the airport. The rest of the trip back was rather uneventful, but we all agreed that this long weekend in Sicily was a great time and just what we had all needed.  A few days to just hang out in the sand and sun and laugh with some girls truly was a great way to end our spring break! 

All in all, Sicily was a great time and I'm really glad that I got to go with a bunch of girls and just hang out and relax for my last few days of spring break.