THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE...

     Home. 

     Especially after two days of travel: Palermo to Milan to London's Heathrow. Overnight. London to Atlanta to Tucson. The last leg of the trip ran about 23 hours, so yes: We WERE glad to be home.

      And to bask in the enthusiastic welcome of our neighbors who met the plane.

(Ed. Note:  Sorry it is so blurry. Too tired and laughing too hard!)

 

      Final thoughts? First, we didn't see a great deal of difference between Sicily and mainland Italy. However, we were in tourist areas (except for the notorious cow-path expedition), so maybe we weren't seeing the “real” Sicily.

      Second: The country was far more prosperous than I'd expected. The major roadways were beautiful, and the fields were all well tended and planted with crops. In Roman times, Sicily was the breadbasket of the empire. Perhaps it still is.

      Third: Most of the tourist areas such as Ragusa were immaculate. No trash. Streets washed. But away from the central tourist areas, lots of trash. On the roadways, the turn-outs were filled with bags of trash. This lack of pride in their country shocked me.

     And finally: Driving there was not nearly as bad as we'd been led to believe. Sure, the cities were like a bumper-car rink, but outside, people seemed sane and even—can you believe it?—courteous. Of course, Bob was doing all the driving, so his take on this may differ.

     In summary, we're glad we went. One more item to take out of the bucket. 

     Portugal next?

A SLOW BOAT

     Just a quick note about last evening. After dinner, we strolled down to the docks where fishermen sold directly to customers waiting with plastic bags to buy really fresh fish. Bob snapped an excellent photo of Castellammare at dusk. 

      Today, instead of struggling with maps and Suzanne, we

left the car parked in the lot out back of the hotel and booked passage on a slow boat to . . . I'm not really sure where we went. It was somewhere along a jut of land west of Castellammare.

      We were on a catamaran with an intrepid Italian skipper who spoke no English. There were 15 passengers in addition to us, and none of them spoke English either. So the

babble of Italian was background music for the whole, four-hour trip.

      What we saw was various kinds of shoreline from rocky with interesting rock formations to gentle mountains. 

 

 Modern houses and some not-so-modern ones.

     We stopped for lunch (sandwich with some cheese and tomatoes) at a beach where people hiking along a 7 km trail could stop for a dip. 

     On our return to port, Bob snapped a photo of Castellammare snuggling down under its mountain.

      The trip sounds boring, and in a way it was, but it was fun being on the water and not driving. Later, we decided that the excursion's two one-hour rest-stops were for people to take a dip, but it was early in the season for that, especially for the mostly elderly passengers.

      So, tonight we'll have our farewell-to-Sicily dinner, and tomorrow, we begin our two-day journey back to Tucson. Although we'll stop for an overnight at Heathrow, we won't have another blog entry until we're back home.

HERE A TEMPLE, THERE A TEMPLE

     They seem to be everywhere in Sicily, these old Greek temples, like the drug stores on every corner in Tucson. The one today was in Segesta (5th Century BCE). It is one of the

best preserved in all Italy, possibly because it was never finished. Someone invaded the area before it was completed, so it began life as a kind of ruin, and that must have kept it preserved untouched for 2500 years. Our visit, being in spring, was enhanced by fields of wild flowers: those yellow ones that are most prominent everywhere, some poppies, and lots of purple thistle. (Try saying “thistle in Sicily” three times, rapidly. Betcha can't.)

We drove all this way, and climbed up here, for this?

Bob was particularly impressed with yet another ruin of a temple.

      The Segesta temple is beautifully sited on a hill top with lots of splendid views, but further up is a Greek (then Roman) amphitheater, which is still used in the summer. Like most such amphitheaters, it has an amazing view beyond the stage area—not as dramatic as the one in Taormina with Etna as a backdrop, but still impressive. You have to wonder how those ancient actors managed to compete with the scenery.

But Stew was anxious to give it a try by watching some modern day tragedy.

      Okay, so we took the bus up to the amphitheater instead of walking the scenic mile or so up . It was only 1.5 Euros each, and the day was hot. We went from sweltering (there) to being chilly in the sea breeze back here in Castellammare, where we did go for a short stroll, walked through a small park where we found not only red, but also purple poppies (?), took another selfie with the Norman castle in the background, and finally visited the castle itself which was free. And rightly so.

 

 

BATES MOTEL ON THE SEA

After saying goodbye to Pim and Stuart, Bob drove us a couple of hours up the southern coast of Sicily to the western port of Castellammare del Golfo ("Sea Fortress on the Gulf").

From 827 AD, it was occupied by Arabs, who built a castle fortress that was later enlarged by the Normans. It's also noted for having been the birthplace of such American Mafia figures as Joseph Bonanno.

      Today, the town's small harbor, which is nestled below a high mountain, is home to many small pleasure boats and a few fishing boats. Like most towns in Sicily, this one clearly has a love affair with steep roadways, ramps, and stairs. This one had 76 steps that began after a long ramp.

     For once, Suzanne guided us (mostly) well, since we were on major roads all the way, not cow paths. She was a bit confused in town, however, because the streets she wanted us to go on were often one-way the wrong way, but Bob managed to find our hotel anyway.

      The hotel, like the town itself, seemed eerily, deserted. After checking in, we took a walk around, stopping to check out at a restaurant the desk clerk recommended. One of sales people outside was surprised that our hotel had recommended them.

     “Oh, they're open?” he asked.

      “Apparently,” I replied, “and how long are you open for lunch?”

      “Oh, till about two,” he replied.

      “It's ten minutes after two now,” Bob noted, looking at the empty dining room.

      “Then make it three,” the man replied.

We said we'd be back.

     Along the waterfront and up the many steps in town, nearly everything was closed including the castle, which said it would reopen from 3:30 – 6:30 pm. Then we began to understand. Not only were we slightly pre-season, we were, at that hour, in mid-siesta. So back we trudged to join the town for its collective nap.

     Back at the hotel we discovered that there was no heat in

The Cerri (Bates) Hotel

the room. The temp outside had been 81, but now it was dropping and, since the hotel had just opened yesterday for the season, the room had that built in coldness from a long winter of no heat. As I write, they are talking of changing our room. Stay tuned!

***UPDATE*** The heat is on. Seems they needed to "open up" something. Phew...

A DAY OF WINE AND TEMPLES

    After dinner last evening, we returned to our B&B to find that Pim and Stuart, our friends from New Zealand, had arrived safely, but only Stuart was still up. Pim had gone to bed early, since she's ending day #2 of a cold that resembles the ones we've been battling for two weeks now. Happily, ours are much better.

The next morning, we met them for breakfast on the patio with its handsome views, and began the process of catching

Stuart & Pim

up.

     Then we went off to tour the Valley of the Temples, a collection of Greek temples, the oldest dating back an astonishing 2600 years. In the 5th Century BCE, Agrigento was a prosperous town of 200,000, but over the next centuries, it was plundered by enemies and disrupted by earthquakes, leaving most of its temples in ruins.

 

     Happily, archeologists have worked hard over the past two hundred years to preserve what they can of the magnificent temples. I should note that the setting for the temples is a hill overlooking the ocean. The view alone is worth the price of admission. (Remember you can click on any image to make it larger!)

 

     The best-preserved temple (430 BCE) is called The Temple of Concordia to celebrate the concept of concord or harmony. It survived the Christian era by serving as a church, just as the Pantheon

Temple of Concordia

in Rome did. Since then, archeologists have worked to preserve it, beginning in 1788. I can not say what has been reconstructed and what is original, but the overall effect is awe inspiring. As I mentioned yesterday, we can see it atop the hill from our B&B. Here it is close up.

      When I researched the area back in Tucson, I was confused by what temples were where, and how we'd find them all. I need not have worried.

Once you pay your admission fee, you get to walk with a great many other people including large groups of school children along a wide, mile-long paved path. All the ruins along the way are identified, usually in several languages including English. Pim and Stuart rented audio guides, so they could add a pertinent fact here and there.

      And being good tourists, we had to take a selfie with the Temple of Juno (mid-5^th Century BCE) in the background. This was the first temple we visited, so we

looked much fresher than we would have at the end of our tour of the 1300 hectare park. I can only imagine what it must be like for tourists visiting in the summer. For us, the temperature was in the high 60s, but much warmer in the sunshine.

      After a short break at at cafe for cold water (beer for Stuart), we headed off to view the Regional Archeological Museum. Foolishly, we asked Suzanne to guide us there, and she started to take us on a tour of who knows what? When Bob noticed that she wanted to go another 21 miles, we fired her. Pim, who had another GPS program (WAZE), guided us back to a museum that was almost walking distance from our B&B.

      I was impressed with the modern museum itself and how well everything was displayed, but its contents left us numb. There were rooms after rooms of shards and pots, all carefully described in Italian and English, but not much else on display. As Pim observed, a museum doesn't have to exhibit everything it owns. Less, in this case, would definitely have been more.

      Back at the B&B, Salvatore, our energetic host, announced that his sister and her boyfriend had decided after all to offer guests a dinner this evening on site. Oh happy day! No driving on rutted roads after dark. We asked him to photograph the four of us to show how pleased we were with this news.

 

      Pim and Stuart needed to go in town this afternoon to do some errands, so they were charged with buying a couple of bottles of good Sicilian wine to celebrate our reunion, our on-site dinner, our not having to drive, and our beautiful dinner companion!

 

OH SUZANNE

     Our inn at Piazza Armerina was bare bones and COLD. It hosted a biking tour group of 26 Brits whose average age was maybe 55-60. We were about the only other guests. We slept soundly under two heavy wool blankets, since there was no heat in the inn.

     In the morning, we drove to the Villa Romana del Casale, which was only a mile from the inn. By arriving just at opening, we had the whole place pretty much to ourselves. As we left, the tour buses began pouring in.

     The Villa was huge: around 40 rooms, all of which had elaborate mosaics on the floors. The walls too would have been decorated with frescoes, although most are now missing. It certainly was a palace fit for, and probably used by, an emperor.

     The entire complex is now covered to preserve the ruins, and there are walkways that take you over and around all the rooms. The central courtyard was huge, with rooms leading off on all four sides. At one end was the Corridor of the Great Hunt, which was 197 feet of mosaics ( ! ) depicting all sorts of animals being hunted, captured, and loaded onto ships for display and use for

entertainment back in Rome or other capital cities. One of the mosaics showed a lazy servant being beaten by his master for being slothful.

     Some of the rooms depicted their use, such as the two guys leading to the bathing area. Others showed girls in bikinis playing various sports; still others had mythic themes. The largest room in the complex had only fragments of mosaics, but archeologists believe it was for the master of the house (the emperor?) to greet guests, seated on a raised throne.

 

     Later, I broke down and bought a book showing many of the scenes that we were able to see only from the elevated walkways in shaded light.

     After our self-guided tour which included signs with English texts, we checked out of our frigid hotel and headed for Agrigento. Suzanne (our GPS) was given an address, and off we went across the countryside. And since we had plenty of time, we stopped several times to photograph some of the vistas and the banks of flowers. Here's a small sample. 

 

 

 

     

All was going well until we reached a small town where we hoped to access a major roadway to take us to Agrigento. The access road, however, was blocked for construction, I guess, so Suzanne, bless her heart, directed us to an alternative route that began down a steep, narrow road and gradually turned into a dirt road which turned into a cow path. Think Vermont's back roads in mud season...only dry and overgrown. We literally thought that we might be stuck there, unable to turn around and unable to proceed. But intrepid Bob plowed on, and eventually the road grew wider until we saw an astonished farmer wondering what on earth we were doing coming out of a path used only by heavy tractors. I waved. He waved back, and back we went in town to ask a man at a gas station (1) where on earth we were, and (2) how to get out of there. He gave told us to drive 3 km in one direction until we saw signs for Palermo, then another 10 km until we saw a sign for Agrigento. His companion smiled and waved a big circle indicating how far the round-about was. But the directions worked, and we ended up on the road we wanted at long last—no thanks to Suzanne!

     I chose our B&B for tonight and tomorrow night for two reasons: they served dinner so we didn't have to go out (They don't do that anymore.), and because we could walk to the Valley of the Temples (You could, but you'd be illegal, so you need to drive to the official gate.). Oh well, it's an interesting place at the end of a long, rutted dirt road, only slightly better than the cow path we'd been on earlier. And the window of our room opens onto a lush courtyard filled with birds, flowers, peacocks, ducks, dogs, and who knows what else?

  

     Then, from the terrace in front of the B&B is a stunning view of the Temple of Concord (430 BCE) that we expect to visit tomorrow. It's one of the three best preserved Greek temples in the world, other two being in the agora in Athens, and in Paestum on the coast of Italy just south of the Amalfi Coast. Turns out we've seen to the other two on previous trips, and look forward to seeing this one tomorrow.

As seen from our B&B patio

 

ON THE ROAD TO PIAZZA ARMERINA

Today, we began our driving tour in a rented Fiat. Bob, who did all the driving, was comfortable with the stick shift and said that the car handled well. Our destination was Piazza Armerina, about two hours driving time from Ragusa. But . .

     Our GPS, “Suzanne,” (yes, Brad, she is named after your mother!) turned out to have a mind of her own, and she took us off into the countryside to places that never even appeared on our Michelin map, so the trip took almost twice as long. The roads were so narrow that it was rare to find a place to pull off. Fortunately, traffic was extremely light, so the drive was not too tense. [Bob here: Suzanne was programed to the wrong place by me. The errors were not all her fault! But at one rotary, she said to take the 2^nd right. During our several go-arounds, we tried each exit and not one satisfied her. Finally we simply headed away and she 'recalculated.']

     I wish I had photos of the countryside, but since we could not stop, and our photographer was doing the driving, we have none. All I can say is that it was astonishingly beautiful: rolling hills, fields and roadside banks of spring flowers—yellow mustard and daisies, red poppies, deep purple crown vetch, and others we could not identify. The most striking were the banks of yellow flowers with the red poppies mixed in. We promise pictures tomorrow. For sure!

     Oh, and all across the countryside are amazing stone walls built without mortar some two hundred years ago. Apparently, peasants were given the right to pass on their tiny farms to their heirs, so they took the time to clear their fields and build these walls. Having built some stone walls myself, I can really appreciate not only their labor, but also their artistry.

     Tomorrow, we visit Villa Romana del Casale, which is sumptuous even by decadent Roman standards. It was probably a “hunting lodge” owned, maybe, by the co-emperor Diocletian (286-305 AD). In the 12^th Century, it was covered by 33 feet of mud and no serious excavation occurred until the 1950s. So the mosaics, which the villa is famous for, were amazingly well preserved. We''ll have a look.