Friday 18 September 2015
A longish day today as we head out of Ragusa and along the south coast of Sicily. So a lot of dozing on the coach. A brief stop for coffee and to stretch legs and then we head to Agrigento where, on the top of a hill is the “Valley of the Temples”, so called because the modern town looks down on the temples from above.
The temperature today is even higher and I am really feeling it for once. We look at the Temple of Hera which is the highest and then we slowly descend to the far more complete Temple of Concordia which shows a good example of the Greek approach to architecture and their need for almost perfect symmetry. At the far end is the temple of Hercules which like Hera suffered badly from earthquakes and time. Photos here.
Due to the heat we retreat to the cafe and treat ourselves to a granita whilst the more intrepid head to see the Temple of Zeus. Later of course I find I should not be consuming granita as they are largely sugar.
Lunch is at a countryside restaurant across the valley from the Temples and this includes one of the most memorable dishes consumed on the holiday – an excellent lemon risotto. Sadly the undercooked veal/beef for the main course rather ruined the effect.
Salvatore is back in the driver’s seat and we now head further along the coast to Marinella where the heat challenged choose to retire to our rather nice hotel room (for two nights) and the others head out to see some more ruins.
In the evening we wander down the steps at the back of the hotel and out on to the main street and on to the small harbour wall at the far end of which we sat to watch the sunset. As usual the wife had studied eating places on Trip Advisor and the recommended location was right in front of us, so was easy to find. A nice meal and we get to stay two nights!