Car Rentals in Sicily: Picking Up Your Rental Car at the Trapani Airport

The Trapani Airport – Birgi Vincenzo Florio is very tiny and you don’t need a map of it (that in anyhow you don’t find it on the official website – www.aeroportotrapani.com/eng): it’s mainly a domestic Airport, where in a day you can find just eleven flights and only four airlines that use Trapani: Ryan Air and Alitalia the most famous. So in a small airport without problems or endless walks you can find the car rental desk easily, however, some tourists didn’t find an english speaking clerk to rent a car in Trapani Airport – Sicily with no difficulties.

About renting a car, are worth same rules everywhere: read through the terms and conditions; opt for a rate that excludes the deductible for damage or vandalism, the so-called “Kasko”, will pay a little more but won’t have any surprises when you return the car; at the moment of the redelivery of the car check carefully the car even at night and if visibility is not good move it to a point where it can be inspected and if somes damages or accessory is not marked on the contract say it to car rental office (better to lose 15 minutes more on arrival than pay before leaving!). Besides take care of the hired car more and better than yours; use your common sense to park the car inside the strips or otherwise considering that we aren’t alone and parking good is a form of respect for others.

Car rental service at the Trapani Airport

The parking lot of the car rental service in Trapani Airport is large; walk inside it during hot sicilian summer couldn’t be a relaxing experience! Then you feel better: driving out Trapani Airport is easy and yet far from normal traffic of the city. If you don’t take “autostrada” (highway in italian) but regional roads you will get beautiful views on nature and architecture. Anyway, getting back to the reservation of your rental car in Trapani Airport: it’s better to book online (best deals on rentalcars.com) in order to be sure of your rental car, with no bad surprises. You know what car you will have, you are sure about how much you are going to pay.

From Trapani Airport to your destionation…

Are you going to Egadi or to another wonderful piece of Paradise in Sicily? Along the road that runs from Trapani to Paceco and Marsala, it is possible to see numerous dazzlingly white mountains shimmering in the sun. These are not snow-capped mountains but hills of salt. The favourable climatic circumstances, such as high temperatures and a wind that increases evaporation, plus the shallowness of the water, contribute to create the evocative and incredible landscape created by the salt flats, which form a sort of immense light-game that ranges in colour from green to pink.

The tourist paths for visits to the salt flats wind their way around the great basins and, running along the edges of the tanks of seawater which glistens in the sun as it crystallizes finally reach the mounds of salt. These mounds are topped by a series of recently restored windmills that recall the days when they were among the main instruments for pumping the water and grinding the salt, a view that has to be enjoyed, moreover at sunset, when everything becomes tinged with red.

The first stop to make on the salt road along coast road SP21 in the direction of Marsala is at Nubia, the World Wildlife Fund that manages the Riserva Naturale delle Saline di Trapani e Paceco (Trapani and Paceco Salt Flats Nature Reserve), where a “Salt Museum” has been set up in a 300-year-old salt-working house. Here are illustrated the various phases of the working of the salt, and some of the equipment used for extracting and gathering the salt is also displayed: the gears of the mills, shovels, cogwheels, taps, pinions. The information panels on the walls and the photographs of the salters at work combine to immerge visitors in the world of the salt flats and tell them of a craft with fixed times and rituals that were handed down from generations.

The most spectacular salt flats are to be seen along highroad SP21 in the direction of lo Stagnone, the “Ettore e Infersa” salt flats are well signposted. Thanks to the great interest of two men, Ettore and Infersa, who restored and returned to working order a mill over 500 years old, once an important instrument for the grinding of the salt, it is still possible to see the beauty of this ancient craft.

The star-shaped windmill consists of a “cupola” and six trapezoidal sails with a wooden framework, to which is applied the fabric of the sails that rotate in the wind. Inside the windmill, a complicated system of cogwheels and gears makes it possible to turn the cupola and the sails, exploiting the energy of the wind in order to grind the salt and channel the water. This particular windmill is connected to what is known as an Archimedean screw. The scales can rotate at a speed of 20 km per hour and generate 120 horsepower, to drive the grindstone on the ground floor it is necessary to reach at least 30 to 40 horsepower.

So… take your rental car and go to explore the wonderful Trapani Area in Sicily – Italy!

Book now your rental car at the Trapani Airport or wherever in Sicily!