My Life in Travel

The journey in Sicily continues. After amazing Palermo and joyful Cefalù, the next stop was planned in Agrigento. This is a great place for people, who love archaeological sites, hostory, street strolling and good food (of course, we are in Italy!). And we also came here after interesting experiences by visiting Roman temples. The train from Palermo to Agrigento took around 2 hours and costed 11€. The first impression of the city was that everything was yellow. All the buildings around were in yellow pattern. The weather wasn’t the best, the sky was covered with dark clowds, but luckily wasn’t raining. And the first thing we had to do was to find our hotel, leave the luggage there and go after adventures. Our hotel owner sent us a video instructions, which helped us to find our place easily. It was in the Old Town of Agrigento, between narrow and beautiful streets, some of which had interesting art paintings. The room was big and bright, with a lovely view to the yard, and which was not less important, it was warm enough! After refreshing there, we made a light planning of the day and went out.

The main plan of the day was visiting Archaeological site of Agrigento, which is also known as Valley of the Temples. But it was quite far from the city center. We tried to find a public transport that goes at least close to the Valley, but in vain. No any bus was going on that direction. We asked locals, no one could answer. Also we didn’t see any bus going there. However today on their official web site there is an information available on how to get there by bus. What to do? Open Google Maps, check the direction and start walking. The Valley itself is huge, and has 2 entrances on different sides. So we started the way to the main entrance, which took around an hour of walk. An hour in an empty roads, because the Valley was “outside” the town, no any buildings were around. Only some trees and parks and sometimes cars passing by. After an hour of walk like a crazy we reached the entrance, and you know what? It was closed! It had to be open but it was locked! We tried to find someone, a door keeper, security quard.. no one was there. No any announcement was placed about the reason of closure. So upset! On the other side of the street there was an archaeological museum of Agrigento. We went there to check whether they might know something. The workers of the museum were also surprised that the entrance to the Valley was closed! They suggest us to go and check if the other entrance is open and enter from there. But that second entrance was about 2km away from there, and the day was passing and getting dark. Unfortunately this time we were not that lucky to see all for what we came to Agrigento, so we skipped the museum, skipped the Valley and started to walk up on the same empty street, to the town.

What we were expecting to see:
Valley of the Temples (it. Valle dei Templi) is an archaeological site in Agrigento (AKA ancient Greek Akragas) and is one of the main attractions of Sicily, representing ancient Greek art and architecture. The Valley includes remains of seven temples, all in Doric style, which are Temple of Concordia that is one of the best preserved in the Valley, Temple of Juno (Hera Lacinia), Temple of Heracles, Temple of Olympian Zeus, Temple of Castor and Pollux, Temple of Hephaestus and Temple of Asclepius. Most of the temples were built in the 5th century BC. Some of them were destroyed by an earthquake. The Valley covers an area of 934ha (imagine how big is it!) and is included in a list of Unesco World Heritage Sites.

Temple of Concordia, seen from the town of Agrigento

It was around 5pm, cold, windy. We were hungry, tired, disapointed and had to “climb” up another hour to get the city center. Finally we reached the center and started to look where can we have some food. But this is Italy, where everything is closed for dinner before 7-8pm. Definitely this wasn’t our day. Not only restaurants, but everything was closed! No any open market or even a clothing store was open. And it was not weekend! We started to check on Google which restaurant will be opened first, but it was too cold to stay outside before that. And no meaning to go to the hotel too (we didn’t come here to spend time in a hotel room, right?). So we found a small cozy place with 2-3 tables only, where we could warm up with a cup of tea and some sweets (at least to survive before dinner). Tea was perfect, sweets delicious. But we decided to go out and walk in the streets of Old Town of Agrigento until we find some place to eat. So we started to go around all the narrow streets, check all yellow pattern buildings, crossed by some churches, which also were closed, found few places from where we could see the city and the Valley of the Temples from above, and moved forward.

Finally we saw a restaurant, which was opening its doors and getting ready to invite hungry people like us. We got in quickly and asked for the menu. The waitress was very kind, she brought a menu but also informed us that the cook has not arrived yet, so if we want to order something to eat, we shall wait a bit more. Of course, we can survive a little more, not a problem, haha. We selected the food to order and asked for some wine as well. The lady offered a local wine, called “Nero d’Avola”. I heard about this wine before but haven’t tried. And I though – “this is a sign”, and agreed with her suggestion. And didn’t regret. That was really a good wine, perfect for the evening. The pasta we ordered also wasn’t bad. The restaurant was almost empty. We were enjoying the meal with the wine without rush. When we finished and asked for the bill, the girl serving us came and asked whether we want to have a small excursion in their restaurant. It was unexpected for us, but it turned out that previously this place was an old winery storage. Even until now there were rooms where they keep wines in a special climate, they kept and demonstrate big barrels, in which they used to keep wine as well. Also we saw a part of an old aqueduct system, which was connecting the restaurant with the church next to it. This was the last “cherry on the cake” of our day and we went to the hotel quite satisfied after a nice dinner in such an interesting place we couldn’t even imagine.

Yes, the trip to Agrigento didn’t went as was planned, we couldn’t see the Valley of the Temples, for what the trip was actually planned, but we had some fun adventures, leant something unexpected and spent a nice time with a glass of Sicilian good red wine.