Selinunte

Ruins at Selinunte Archaeological Park

The remaining temple at Selinunte

On day 2/3 of our cruise we did our second excursion, to the ruins of Selinunte. It was my second choice after Erice – for some reason I’d wanted to go to Selinunte, but it actually wasn’t nearly as good as Paestum. Still as JD said if we hadn’t been to Paestum we would have thought better of this visit. It was quite a long bus trip to get there: we had a woman guide, who was actually very informative. We have radio receivers and earphones. We passed the turnoff to Segesta, where we’ve been before, and although it’s lovely there, we wanted to go somewhere different. But we did not go to the museum, although we went through it; toilet facilities were extremely basic; and there was only one temple standing; the other one, probably unfinished, was just mounds of rubble and what might have been intended to be pillars. We went inside the standing temple, although it’s always a mission to climb the steep and uneven steps to do so. There were no ruins of a city or town as there had been for Paestum. And there were crowds and crowds of people. I think it was a public holiday in Sicily. None of the people we’d been with to Paestum were on this tour – perhaps wisely!

There was a beautiful acropolis that we could see in the distance, too far away to walk to.

Our guide was very informative about the history of Segesta and Selinunte, who although only a few kilometres apart, went to war with each other, and I think Segesta prevailed!

It was a hot and tiring trip, and we went back to the bus early. But it was the wrong set of buses! Ours was some way away. JD thoughtfully waited to show others the way to the right bus, but the guide was upset with us for not keeping with the group!

Here was the full tourist experience, with shops of souvenirs that we were marched through, not that one wanted to buy anything. It’s much more fun to shop when you can browse and choose something at a reasonable price.

Somehow it was very late when we got back to the ship, and we were told that the Terrace cafe was being kept open just for us. So it was a case of going straight there, and grabbing some food. Before eating I went to a public bathroom to wash my hands. Sadly the yummy cold rice pudding with raspberries was not available today. We figured it was rice rather than sago. I had a bread roll with rare roast beef, Dijon mustard and cheese. It was pretty good. Lemonade and coffee completed the meal.

That evening we were to have dinner with our Australian friends, and meet them at 6:30 pm at the GDR. But the food wasn’t great: a very ho-hum crab cake; “roast” beef and a roast potato and vegetable timbale; with a sauce with an unpleasant aftertaste. The best part of the meal was the dessert: baba au rhum! Some tiny baba, beautifully served. Yum!

Then after the guys had a whisky we went to bed – we had an early start the next day. Tunis!

Ngā mihi nui!