How do we pronounce that word? Apparently try Mar (easy bit) and then add the name of a current famous Liverpool player. Spent last night in Balestrate: here is our van parked and we stayed around the corner:
Nothing too hostile but an interesting place. The ‘host’ for our B&B was a throw back from the 60s (hippy era) and we entered our room to him and his ‘friends’ in a very heated discussion(!!!???) that indicated a certain amount of alcohol and whatever else had been present in the previous hours! The street I photograph is typical of many historic towns in Italy and also Spain. A very intense evening for us with not a lot of sleep involved but prayer and processing. We left Balestrate this morning but with our host opening his arms and ‘Sicily welcomes you’. We take that.
A colleague who has helped us a lot – Michael Schiffmann – had contacted us about a month ago with ‘the South-West holds the keys and you need to go there early on to discover revelation for the island. There is no South West as the island is a triangle. That showed that MS was not looking at a map or doing some google research (all valid) but giving what he had received. So we have been holding and seeking to process that and the South West (without there being a south west) puts us on the coast from Agrigento up. We settled on Marsala as the starting point and have secured for our next 6 days an apartment here. It will give us time to settle (been on the road for 11 days). Marsala was where Garibaldi began his campaign that ended in Italy being united. He landed in Marsala, from there conquered the island and then worked north on the mainland, thus before long ended the ‘two Sicilies kingdom’ as the border (the one we prayed on a few days ago) went and Italy soon united to become what we have today. A place of entry to that movement that interestingly had at its heart politicians, journalists, economists and ‘states-people’.
We know this is the next place for us – unfinished business for sure in Balestrate – but here we will sow something into the ground . Interestingly there is a ‘new gate’ into the city – probably where Garibaldi entered. (Map below… Marsala off to the left, Balestrate is just to the west of Palermo.
Sad to leave the high mountains (and Etna) behind but this is now the right place.