Last week I was excited to make a flying 48-hour visit to Trapani, north west Sicily, to attend the award ceremony for the Instagram photography competition for which I was one of the winners there last month. So here’s a little bit about the award ceremony, and also about my trip to Trapani. It’s less on the tourist trail than some Sicilian cities. And that’s just one of the reasons why Trapani’s totally worth a visit of at least a few days if you’re planning a trip to Sicily.
Jump to:
– The Winning Photos
– The Prize-Giving Ceremony
– Visiting Trapani: How to Get There
The Winning Photos
The photography competition was for the best pictures of Trapani’s Easter Misteri procession. There were three winners – of which my photo below came third – plus several specially commended photos.
Proloco Trapani – the promotional partnership for the city of Trapani – ran the competition, in conjunction with Sicilian Tourist Board Visit Sicily. This is their article about the competition winners on their website. And this is an article about the competition winners on a Sicilian local news website.
On Proloco Trapani’s website you can also see the other beautiful winning/commended photos.
The Prize-Giving Ceremony
The prize-giving was conducted in Italian, of course! But I’ve only recently started learning Italian, so I’m not very good. It was very kind indeed of Proloco Trapani to sit someone next to me to interpret. So I was able to understand what was going on, and also to do my short speech/Q&A in English.
The Winners
Here’s the winners with their plaques at last week’s award ceremony:
The Prizes
The Venue
Food is obviously a hugely important part of Trapanese and Sicilian cultural heritage. So it was fitting that the prize-giving ceremony was held at Trapani’s Nuara Gastronomic Cultural Centre. Nuara does some great work promoting Trapanese and Sicilian food traditions, and I will write more about it another time.
Click individual pictures to enlarge & scroll
48 Hours in Trapani
The Food
This was my third trip to Trapani. And since food is such a big part of its culture, I made sure I sampled some of the regional cuisine I hadn’t yet had the chance to try. As well as some old favourites of course!
I hadn’t before tried Cùscusu Trapanese, about which I’d received Paulo Salerno’s book. So taking Paulo’s recommendation, I sought out the restaurant Il Moro – one of the places in the city that takes pride in serving this fish couscous dish in the traditional way. Fish sat atop the couscous, and came with a jug of extra sauce, which was red/brown, rich and pungently fishy, and reminded me strongly of French soup de poisson.
Click individual pictures to enlarge & scroll
Tuna fishing and processing has been a traditional industry in the waters around Trapani. The fresh red tuna that I tried at Il Moro restaurant was absolutely the reddest I’ve ever had – a deep oxblood red, not done justice by my photo below taken in dim restaurant lighting.
I was disappointed to run out of time for visiting the museum dedicated to the tuna industry – Ex Stabilimento Florio della Tonnare di Favignana and Formica. It’s housed in the former tuna processing factory on the island of Favignana, which can be reached easily by boat in about 20 minutes from Trapani port. I’ll be sure to make time for it next I’m in Trapani, which I hope will be in the summer.
No trip to Sicily is ever complete without having at least one Cassata Siciliana, which is genuinely one of the best cakes I’ve ever had! (If you want to have a go at making one at home, here’s a recipe I published previously, given to me by a boutique hotel in Taormina). And here alongside it are some of the other dishes I managed to squeeze in (clearly, this was 48 hours lost from my low-carb eating regime!)
A Little Sightseeing
During my flying visit, I also took in just a few conventional, and less conventional, sights around Trapani.
Click individual pictures to enlarge & scroll
Visiting Trapani: How to Get There
Where is Trapani?: Trapani is in the north west of the Italian island of Sicily.
Getting There: Trapani is served by the local international airport Vincenzo Florio Airport Trapani–Birgi. As at June 2018, the airlines Alitalia, Blue Air, Mistral Air, AliBlue Malta and Ryanair serve Trapani Airport. I got there from the UK by flying with Alitalia, via Rome on the way out, and via Milan on the way back. The ATS bus service connects Trapani airport to the city centre (around €5, and 30 minutes, each way).
For a bigger range of flight options, the motorway connects Trapani with the airport in Sicily’s capital Palermo (around 1 hour’s drive), or the airport on Sicily’s east coast in Catania (around 3¼ hours drive).