Day tripping
Sunday was sunny so after washing laundry and getting it out on a rack to dry in the sun and wind we headed out to a couple beach sites south of Ribera. The first, Piana Grande is about 22 km from here. It's a long beach area, down a steep narrow road. Like most public beaches it's not real clean or sandy. Trash abounds on the round, flat rocks. The beach is a lot like Kalaloch in Washington but the rocks are brown and yellow, not black, since the hillsides around here are brown and yellow. There's a road that runs along the beach for miles, but it's not paved. It's one lane, rock and muddy from the rains. Maybe this summer it'll be dry enough, and packed down by use to where it's driveable by a vehicle like our rental Jukebox. I've gotten it through some fairly rough gravel roads but this one was too bad to try. You could see where the hillside had slid down over the "road" a few yards from where the "paved" road hit the beach.
After seeing there was no way to get to the next beach area along the beach we headed back inland to the highway and turned off for Seccagrande a few km to the east. Here there's actually paved road wide enough for 2 cars to pass, with care, all the way down to the water. There's also a real little town with a few restaurants and bars. Some were even open during the winter. Most, however, were not. This is definitely a summer town. Most houses were not occupied but there are some permanent residents based on the cars parked in the streets.
We drove around for a bit, checking out housing. There's a new development going in up from the beach with modern houses, wide asphalt streets and real curbs. I checked out house availability for this area but soon gave up any idea of looking further. The prices run in the 300,000 euro range. Madre! There was one in Ribera, a few miles away, for 150,000 but it was in an industrial area next to a brickyard. We are now considering rentals, naturally. Our friend here in Sciacca told us 3 years ago that the prices were being driven up by the British residents. Maybe with Brexit they will have to stop full-time living if they get hit with the same 90 day visa crap we're dealing with. That could reduce the market pressure. We can only hope.
Saturday night we headed back to the port to eat at one of the restaurants we tried last week, Porto San Paolo. It has high recommendations and reviews, and the food definitely proved them right. Cathy had veal marsala, I had swordfish encrusted with pistachios. Both were delicious. The service was good but not as friendly as the Restaurante Italia de Nino that we ate at the Friday before. I got a couple photos as we left that I sent to our daughter back home.
She's due here on Friday and we've got plans to eat and drink in some nice places. Literally on our way here from the airport in Trapani we planned stopping at the Planeta winery and enoteca just south of Sambuca di Sicilia on the banks of Lago Arancio since we all love their wine. We drove to Menfi today to pick up some wine at Cantine Settesoli which is part of the Mandarossa winery. I tried calling Planeta this morning but here was no answer so we drove there on the way back to Sciacca. It was only a 20 minute side trip. We were lucky we did. The reason they didn't answer was because they were closed today for an employee Christmas party but Marianna, who met us at the courtyard and told us about the party, took our name and set up an appointment for a tasting and light lunch on Friday.
Planeta's winery outside of Sambuca. It's the only one where there's a wine shop, and the oldest site.
It's time to log off and fire up the grill. Cooking steaks tonight and it takes a while for the coals to get ready.
Ciao for now.