4/27 Where do I start? This has been the most amazing day! We had our breakfast at the apartment and headed out the door shortly after 9am to see the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento! The walk took about 30 minutes to get to the entrance of the ruins – all downhill – uh oh, I think that means after all the walking through the ruins, we need to walk uphill to get back home! Oh boy! The walk downhill was absolutely beautiful and we were snapping photos like crazy, trying to capture everything we could. We realize there is nothing like being somewhere in person but we do hope you enjoy the photos we were able to get. I felt like a little kid; ooooh, aaaahhh, omg that’s beautiful, oh look at those flowers, look at the olive trees, smell the orange blossoms, look at that view! Yup it was amazing to say the least.

Before I get too far along, let me explain about the Trip Advisor! His name is Jim and every time he tripped, he advised me of whatever was in the way that made him trip so that I would not trip! How many times do I have to tell you Jim – pick up your feet or as my mom used to say, “make sure you look down so you don’t trip” and don’t forget to look up so you don’t walk into a pole – which we did see on this trip. Don’t you dare think it – it was not one of us who walked into the pole! And do you know how hard it is not to laugh at someone when they do that???

As we walked down the hill we were able to catch a few photos of the ruins and it gives you an idea of the landscape and how beautiful the Valley of the Temples really is.

All the trees you see are either olive, almond, orange, lemon or nespolo (loquat) trees, many in bloom, so you can imagine the beautiful aromas coming from these trees. In some of the photos you can actually see the town in the distance so you have some idea as to how far we are walking around here.

Because they top the fruit and nut trees here, you can see this olive tree and it’s beautiful trunk. I would not doubt that the tree itself is 500 years old. Many live to be 1,000 years old. So amazing.

Of course I cannot resist photos of cemeteries. These are quite different from ours and very interesting. This one was way up the hill so we did not go into the cemetery but I had to take a photo of it. My brother, daughter and I love to go through cemeteries and see the different headstones, information on who is buried there and wonder what their story was. Here, each of those crypts belongs to a single family. Remnants of a quarry sit immediately below.

How about Jim standing with these beautiful smelling flower trees!

Now it’s time for some photos of the ruins. Enjoy!

Jim and I in front of the statue of the fallen Icarus just down from the Temple of Concordia. An eye opener for Jim as he has been a member of the Daedalians, a fraternal order of military aviators, for maybe 50 years and knows the Daedalus-Icarus story well but had no idea there was a bronze statue of Icarus here in the Valley of the Temples. As you might recall, Icarus and Daedalus made wings of feathers and wax. Daedalus, the dad, warned they should not fly too close to the sun or the wax would melt and the flyers would fall to the earth and die. Guess what the exuberant son did? That’s him in the photo!

At one point we were able to see the roundabout down below. I think roundabouts are fun and a great way to merge into traffic and they work very well around Italy. I’ve been known to drive around the circle a few times just checking it out and making everyone dizzy! Oh such fun.

There were several flowers that I have never seen before but had to photograph because they were so unusual. No idea what they are. They are not purple pitcher plants by the way.

And the final more vertical temple of our walk through the park was the Temple of Castor and Pollux. As much as we would have liked to see every one of the temples, especially those which seem to line up from East to West, we chose to break off before getting to the Temple of Vulcan

Even our timing on this day worked out well. We made it back up the hill to just half a block down from our apartment at 12:30. Seemed a good time for lunch. And there it was — a restaurant named after the Valley of the Temples! A perfect location for il pranzo.

As a follow-up to the story on our automobile in Sicily, we do have a replacement. Maybe not quite as nice as our first car, a Renault, but we’ll certainly fit in with the locals now – Fiat Panda!

Lunch sort of wrapped up our day although we spent some time in the afternoon thinking about activities for the next few days. We still need to roam around Agrigento Centro, check out a couple of shops and as usual, visit a few more historical and archaeological sites. Before that though, we ARE going to figure out the local bus schedule and ticketing process.