Agrigento, Palermo, and Ciao to Italy...

We arrived in Agrigento without incident...a drive of 2 or 3 hours...until we hit the city limits. Our Michelin directions failed us and once again we found ourselves on one-lane streets heading up or down, never flat, with traffic coming in all directions and everyone really wanting us to get out of the way. A dearth of street signs doesn't help. Again, despite my masculinity, I retreated into the tourist information office to seek help, and found it. After several tries, we were finally able to follow the directions properly (they hid one of the main streets out), and we found the hotel at the end of even more twisty, one-lane, and heavily parked streets. The hotel, actually a bed and breakfast, was incredibly nice, an old family home that is now open for tourists. We had a suite, mind you, with air conditioning that worked (although Leslie has tested every hotel refrigerator and they truly are nothing more than an insulated box...nothing getting cold in there). And the rooftop terrace overlooked the Valley of the Temples, so our hotel owner pointed out each of the temples, ordering us to stand precisely where he was standing. An incredible site: you look off towards the ocean and the valley between the modern city and the sea is divided by a mile-long line of temple ruins.

We gathered our strength and headed out to confront the temples on foot (after driving the wild streets of Agrigento again). It was worth it...the temple of Concordia is, I am told, the best preserved Doric columned temple anywhere (or something like that). It sits on its perch above the ocean, all columns intact. Also made me want to worship Athena or something.

Further down the road, we found more temples, most in much worse shape (one had only three columns standing). The highlight was finding the altars for worshipping the chthonic divinities...cool, man. I got to give it to the Greeks, they know where to site a city. The cool breezes blew in constantly from the ocean...until our walk back to the car when it got hotter than Pompeii (the Christian burial thingies ended up blocking the wind)...if you know what I mean.

Our dinner last night was right out of a DeSica movie...you find the restaurant only after several right angle turns down deserted alleys until suddenly you are in a little piazza with tables. You sit down to dinner with family apartments surrounding you. We watched as Mama hung in the window over us and kept her eyes on the kids, who were playing in the street (you know, next to my table), with dogs barking, etc. A terrier with an appropriately emotive face jumped up to look out of the window next to Mama and comment on the proceedings. It was very sweet...and the food was good too. Leslie scored with a parmigiana made, get this, with fish! Layers of eggplant and tomato and fish and it was incredible. I played it safe with shrimp s'getti.

By the way, you should try this next time you are in Sicily: because there is a not a single, flat plane anywhere on the island of Sicily, we spend the time between courses trying to estimate the slope of the angle that we find ourselves in at that particular restaurant. Some of the angles are quite challenging (especially 3 beers down).

After a cool night in the suite, we enjoyed breakfast on the terrace and retreated to the Toyota Aygo (which we squeezed into a 'parking space' on the street between a garbage dumpster and a driveway...Ricky W. would have been proud). Our drive to Palermo took only 1 and a half hours through spectacularly beautiful countryside, hilly, mountainous, gold, brown, and lots of rocky cliffs at the top. (Sicily needs better public relations...this is one of the most beautiful terrains my pitiful ass has ever seen--and we did not even get to Mount Etna, the island volcano--and all I know about the island is that mafia crap).

Found the hotel amazingly quickly in Palermo, which is big, but beautiful in an old, complicated way. You get a real sense of the different folk who have run the place just from the architecture...the Norman stuff, the Arab stuff, the Baroque. Sometimes all in one building. Our biggest disappointment, however, is that, after hiking across the old city to the Cathedral (good stuff), we ventured a few blocks more to see the Palatine Chapel, which is said to feature the greatest Pantocrantor (sp?) mosaics around (as I understand it, these are depictions of Christ as the creator of everything, but done in spectacular gold mosaics). Of course, after 45 minutes of trying to figure out how to get to the church in the governmental complex, we find that it is effectively closed for restoration (you can go in for 6 Euros and see nothing, or take some tour for 20 Euros and climb on scaffolding or something. The guide was not helpful). Instead, we opted to return the rent car.

Another harrowing journey in the Aygo across Palermo, to this city's version of B.F.E. (not sure why Leslie feels compelled to rent cars from facilities on the edge of town). We had no map, only a mapquest set of directions, and after only 45 minutes, a few driving violations, and a quick question to a cluster of police on the side of the road, we accidentally stumbled on the rental place (I screamed like a 9 year old girl, 'Leslie, Sixt Car Rental! There it is!'...the funny thing is that the manager was on the street waving us in...how did he know we'd be passing by.) We said our farewells to that pitiful excuse for a car and caught a taxi back to the hotel.

So, we now face our last night in Italy. Boo hoo. We have to catch a 6:30 a.m. flight to Rome to Athens tomorrow. That will surely be interesting (our catching that flight, that is).

In the meantime, we are having drinks on the rooftop (where later they promise a concert will be had).

In regard to some of your posts, I keep insisting that Leslie sit down and 'blog,' but he just won't. I will try to find an internet cafe in Athens that serves drinks, and perhaps woo him to the keyboard that way. Ciao.