We set off this morning from Palermo for a short trip to Trapani, just an hour and a half away. The insane traffic of Palermo ate up the half an hour, and then we hit the empty highway all the way to the center of Trapani.

Around half past one, hungry as wolves, we parked. We had planned to arrive in the morning for breakfast, but my son refused to get out of bed. So, lunchtime in Trapani. The sun was scorching, but we love the cool breeze that came to help us surviving the sharp rays.

“La Stuzzicheria,” a mix between a suburban kiosk with bizarre English translations and a forgot-for-a-reason bus station café.

But my son had already spotted a playground right across the street. So, here grabbing a quick but tasty meal, maybe because we were starving, and then we went to throw small cars down the red and yellow slide in the playground.

After a while, it was time to go to the beach. 14 euros for an umbrella and 2 euros and 50 cents for a cappuccino to sip on a beach chair with my feet in the sand—gotta love that.

burying all kind of cars model and then digging them up from sand, looking at shells and then tossing them back into the sea. learning how to scoop up water with our hands—how do you do it? My son with his hand open, Like this! I say, cupping my hands together.

But are we here to go to Trapani or not? Back in the car, with sunglasses and sunburned knees, as usual I forgot to put on sunscreen.

The old town from Google maps looks like the horn of some strange insect. We park by the harbor, on the southern shore, but take a couple of wrong turns and suddenly we’re on the northern shore, a small horn.

On this narrow strip of land, we find several late seventeenth-century churches and residential buildings that were constructed during a time when houses were still pleasant to look at.

A City scorched by the sun, while we stumbling through alleys and corners of weathered tuff, you can feel a lingering mystery, silences and fears that cling to walls like that last piece of plaster on the Cathedral of San Lorenzo.

And why not? A delicious gelato with the flavor of Sicilian cassata helps us leave the city, a minuscule trip. back in the car towards Palermo, where its mumbling traffic awaited us with the question: how do the people of Palermo manage it?