Joan and Lothar Euro 2013: Day 26 27-09-2013 Fri Agrigento

It was a two-stage drive today – the easy bit along the autostrada, and then the slower traffic-affected SS 115. The scenery all along the way is what I like – hills, mountains and valleys supporting plenty of agriculture and viticulture. An interesting feature of Sicily is the large number of wind farms, each not large. What puzzled us was that in each farm often only one turbine would be operating even though there was adequate wind. Maybe the coal-fired power stations prevent them from operating to full capacity?

As we approached Agrigento we became concerned as the GPS’ route to our B&B took us into Porto Empedocle, a most unattractive suburb. We started to worry about what the accommodation would be like. We couldn’t stop, as we were desperately short of cash, the Bancomat (ATM) back in Paceco having refused to give me any yesterday and today, and because our host would be asking for cash in advance. It was a merry ride into Agrigento itself, quite chaotic actually – worse than Palermo because it is a hill town. We were pleased to find an ATM reasonably soon and the veil of worry lifted as this one dispensed cash readily. It is amazing how stressful it can be to have an ATM refuse to co-operate. That taken care of we found to our relief that the B&B was in a beach resort sort of area and was in fact quite pleasant.

After a short rest we headed off to visit the reason for our one-nighter here – the Greek temples in the the mis-named Valle dei Templi (Valley of Temples) as this archaeological site sits on a terrace ridge well above the valley.

There is one large well-preserved temple and three others in various states of completeness or lack thereof, plus the total ruins of at least one other.

Temple 1 Dioskouroi