Local time: May 3, 2014
This day was a trip to Agrigento, Selinunte and two of Sicily’s most famous Greek sites.
We also stopped at Sutera, a beautiful village near the center of the Cefalu Agrigento route that runs right through the middle of Sicily.
To be honest, Sutera is not a great village. After 15 minutes of exploring, we headed to Agrigento, one of the main attractions of the day.
We arrived at Agrigento in about an hour. It rained hard on the way, but this city by the sea was not covered by thick clouds and the weather was fine for sightseeing with occasional sunshine.
The main attraction here is an area about 2km wide called the « Temple Hill ».
The parking lot where we parked was located at the bottom of the hill, but there was a taxi waiting to take us to the entrance of the top of the Temple Hill, and we decided to use it because of the price of 3 euros per person. On the way back, it is rather efficient because you can come back near this parking lot if you go down while visiting the hill.
Well, according to Wikipedia, the Agrigento ruins are one of the finest examples of Magna Graecia art and architecture, and are not only a tourist attraction in Sicily, but also a national monument of Italy.
However, I think it was vaguely spread out and there were few highlights.
Still, it was a good walk.
Next, we went to Selinunte, another archaeological site. It takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes to get there from Agrigento by driving along the sea.
When I came here, I felt that I had come to the west of Sicily.
Serinunte is located in a place where traffic is quite inconvenient, so the number of tourists is less than in Agrigento. However, I thought it was much more enjoyable than Agrigento, because the ruins remaining in the vast land were full of highlights.
The ruins of the Temple of Zeus are very impressive. It is now crumbling, but the scale of the stones in the wreckage reminds us of the grandeur of those days.
After sightseeing in Selinunte, we went further west to Marsala, the westernmost city in Sicily. This is where we will stay for the night.
The hotel was right in the middle of the old town, but we were able to drive right up to the front of the hotel. The streets are wider and safer than I expected.
The old town of Marsala is a small but very beautiful place.
After walking around for about an hour, we had dinner at a restaurant in the old town as well.
To be honest, the food here isn’t great. The wine was not so good, but…. Still, we were able to have « fish couscous », a specialty of western Sicily. It was not so bad.
It was raining when we were about to leave after dinner. Luckily the restaurant was a short walk to the hotel, so we were able to get back without getting too wet.
Tomorrow we go to Palermo, the largest city in Sicily.
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