Travel in Sicily – The Valley of the Temples near Agrigento

By 3:30 we had checked in to our hotel in Agrigento and then we left for the the nearby Valley of the Temples. Rick wanted to walk, but Monica and I convinced him to drive there, since we knew that visiting this archeological park and UNESCO World Heritage site would entail a lot of walking. Ticket booths are present at each end of the park and the entrance cost is a very reasonable ten euros.

Once there we leisurely wandered around this ancient place in amazement. I cannot get over the fact that these temples with their classic Greek Doric columns are still standing after so many centuries. The remains of seven temples are here, the most preserved dating back to the seventh century BC.

The Temple of Concordia ranks equally with the Greek Temple of Hephaestos in Athens, considered to be the world’s best-preserved Greek temples.

From one end of the park to the other was two and a half kilometers and we took our time here.

We could see the entire city of Agrigento from this hilltop position.
I felt as though I had stepped back in time as I walked among these ancient ruins from so long ago, trying to imagine what life had been like at that time.

After seeing these monuments, we took another road back on foot, although a bus was available.  We met some other tourists  who were just starting out, but from the opposite end.  So we gave them some tips and some encouragement, although I was glad we were going home, since it was hot and the walk as uphill.

On the walk back, I got tired and decided to walk to the hotel, rather than go with my brother and sister-in-law to where the car was parked.  I thought this would be a shortcut. Little did I know that I would get lost, and ended up walking much farther and had to ask for directions in Italian from three different people before I made it back to the hotel. Rick and Mo were already there when I finally arrived, exhausted and thirsty. I guess my sense of direction was not as good as I had thought, and I didn’t have my phone with me either.

After getting cleaned up, we went to dinner at the same place we had stopped for lunch. I ordered calamari, but was disappointed.  It was nowhere near as good as some I have had in other parts of Sicily. The Nero D’Avola wine helped though, and I enjoyed the caprese salad. We walked back to the hotel and called it a night, since we would needed to leave in the morning for Palermo, with a stop in the countryside at an agriturismo for a real Sicilian cooking class.