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!