Page 480 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

train station (don’t go down under the bridge). At a second spa, Terme Segestane (
0924 530 057; no credit cards), five to ten minutes’ drive west, mud treatments
(June to mid-Nov only) cost €20, and entrance to the pool (closed 2 weeks in Dec)
is €8.

ARRIVAL AND INFORMATION: ALCAMO

By bus There are frequent bus connections to Palermo with Segesta ( segesta.it),
which also operate a Trapani bus, though these are less frequent than you might hope,
and they all leave before 9am. Russo Autoservizi buses ( russoautoservizi.it) run to
and from San Vito del Capo and Valderice.

By train The nearest train station is down on the coast at Castellammare del Golfo,
from where a few buses run up to Alcamo daily.

Tourist information Alcamo’s tourist office is on Piazza Mercato, near Piazza Ciullo
(Mon–Sat 9am–1pm, plus Mon, Wed & Thurs 4–7pm summer, 3.30–6.30pm in winter;
0924 22 301).

EATING

Bar 900 Corso VI Aprile 105 (no phone). Founded in 1937, this Alcamo institution
has the best pastries in town – including a fabulous choice of miniature morsels – and
an excellent tavola calda at lunchtime, where a full meal is priced at €12 per head.

The ice cream is excellent as well. Tues–Sun 8am–9pm; opens later in summer.

Salsapariglia Via Libertà 1 0924 508 302. Abundant fish dishes such as pasta with
seafood, fish couscous and mussel and clam soup, all of them delicious. In the
evenings they have pizza too. Tues–Sun lunch & dinner.

Castellammare del Golfo

CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO, on the coast about twenty minutes’ drive
northwest of Alcamo, is the biggest of the local fishing ports, entirely surrounded by
high hills and built on and around a hefty rocky promontory that’s guarded by a squat
castle from which the town takes its name. Castellammare’s incredible pedigree of
bloodshed once gave it one of the worst reputations in Sicily for Mafia violence. The
writer Gavin Maxwell, who lived locally during the 1950s, claimed that in that period

eighty percent of the town’s adult males had served prison sentences, and one in three
had committed murder; coupled with this are the official statistics for the same period
that classify one family in six as destitute. Needless to say, all of this is extremely hard
to believe today: strolling down the sloping Corso Garibaldi towards the castle and
harbour, past handsome palazzi interspersed with bars and shops selling beach gear, it