NO COUS COUS SERENDIPITY

We planned on going off for the day, first to Trapani to see the America’s Cup sailing trials, then on to the cous cous fest in San Vito Lo Capo that we cancelled out on for two years in a row. On the way, as we laughed at the graffiti lettering on the “Menfi” sign, we noticed the clouds were getting pretty ominous looking. So again we gave up on the Fest (we don’t even like cous cous much) and instead, we headed for Castelvetrano to buy a vacuum cleaner. And a few other things. After our shopping trip we headed out toward Selinunte to find a restaurant that we could recommend to people when Baffo’s Castle is closed. We passed the ruins and junk shops and went straight toward the nearly deserted beach community of Marinella, the “lido” near Selinunte.
(Fans of The Godfather II will be interested in the fact that someone left two rabbits’ heads hanging on the ticket taker’s booth at Selinunte yesterday. Police are trying to figure out what it means. Hey, horses are expensive!).
Anyway, we drove around the beach town and found streets we had never explored before and several new hotels, and we reminisced about the bakery we had found there a year before we moved to Sicily, and how good their biscotti was. The town itself is simply charming and I felt like a fashion photographer as I shot picture after picture in front of the wondering eyes of a group of hearing-impaired people having a picnic and watching me, signing rapidly all the while. We had a good seafood pranzo (mussel soup and seafood risotto, two of my favorites) on an outside terrazzo overlooking the sea and the look of the clouds made us decide to return to Trapani next week when the races are really on.
Thursday we had pizza with Enza, Brigette and Joe and enjoyed a bit of their garden of paradise. Their hibiscus hybrids are really just unbelievable, and my pictures could not do them justice.