First, we satisfied the pizza craving immediately after posting; had a traditional Sicilian with anchovies; good, but we liked the pies in Naples better. Recommended locales near the hotel were closed on Monday so maybe our choice wasn’t the best. Who knows?

Tuesday’s venture was a long day; departed Palermo at 8 am in a pouring rain, to go to Agrigento, aka “The Valley of the Temples.” After two plus hours of driving through the center of Sicily to the opposite coast on the Mediterranean got us out of the rain. The central part of the island encompasses field after field of vineyards, wheat fields, olive groves and other agricultural products such as oranges in the southern portion (white or blood variety), and others. Very, very rural. Were it not for the signs of cultivation it would seem as if no one was actually living out there.

Agrigento itself is fascinating; settled first by the Greeks it is the site of the second best preserved Greek temple from the fifth century BC, the Temple de Concordia. This also the third largest. Corcordia survives only because it was turned into a Christian church in the 6th century AD. A sister temple at the same site, largely destroyed, was the second largest temple, after the one in Athens. (Much of it was used to build the port on the coast below sometime after the Romans, who later used the temples, left the area.) Our guide for the site, Claudio, was a piece of work. He paraded around holding a chopstick that he used as a pointer, singing to himself and admiring the women.

Then it was on to Piazza del Armerina, site of the ruins of a Roman estate that archeologists surmise was built by a former Roman governor. Its claim to fame are the beautifully maintained mosaics on the floors depicting various scenes of Roman life or mythology such as Hercules and his labors. The guide for this segment, Onofrio, was another goofball. He must have mentioned the Roman’s sexual appetites and apparent lack of interest in privacy a dozen times. Only half the site was open, unfortunately, because of restoration work that is underway, but the mosaics available for viewing were surprisingly intact. See the bathing beauty mosaic (so you thought bikinis came about in the 1950s, wrong!) that accompanies this post.

Then it was on to Taormina, home for the next few days. More to come on this lovely town (it is late), but it is exquisite. We are perched high above a bay with views of Mt. Etna and the water. From the town you can see the mainland of Italy, (Calabria) just 2 miles away. But first, Siracusa on Wednesday.