Agrigento, Sicily

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May 22, 2008

AGRIGENTO, Sicily, Italy

Thursday morning we drove north through the country side and along the Sicilian coast to Agrigento. Another nice drive. This is a small city on the west coast of Sicily and is a resort town with some beautiful beach areas and resorts. ( and some very nice private villas ). Some of the rather rocky beaches are being filled with truckloads of nice, fine, sand. Someone is spending a lot of money !! It is obvious that the tourist business, with all the coastline and beaches, is a very important part of the Sicilian economy.

And OH !!! The Gelato. In a small gelateria in Agrigento they have the best Ice Cream we have ever had.

The other interesting thing is the amount of vineyards. They really like their wine here. Me too !! The best bet in most restaurants is to order Vino della Casa. ( house wine ) as it is all different and all very good from what we found. Alice is not a wine drinker but actually found some that were drinkable for her.

The other claim to fame in Agrigento is “The Valley of Temples” that is a rather large collection of Roman and Greek ruins with a very nice “ Acropolis” on top of a high hill. Of all the ruins and archaeological sites we've ever visited this is the most poorly marked and signed that we have seen. It took us about an hour to find the place ( you can see it from the road ) where you enter the site.
Interesting but a little over rated for what they are offering. The hilltop acropolis' ( 3 ) are very nice to see. One has had a lot of restoration. This was obviously an important place a few thousand years ago.

There was some private entertainment, for a tour group, at our hotel pool area in the evening and we enjoyed some local music and folk dancing from our balcony. Free is good !!

Tomorrow we head back to the mainland and will work our way back to Spoleto, a little ways from Rome.

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