A Day Steeped in History

We're all early risers so were able to start for the nearby Roman Villa del Casale (iii & iv century) before all the other tourists arrived, in fact before it was even open. Somehow we managed to find our way to the archaeologists' enterance so ended up having a freebie. What can anyone say other than the mosaics are just Fab-u-lous!

Room after room and the excavation is not yet finished.The most famous are the hunting scenes and young women in bikinis.

Just time for a coffee stop and then it was onto Agrigento and farther back in time to 581BC and the Valley of the Temples. Christian, being over 65, his enterance was free. By now the sun was high in the sky and in deference to Christian's tired legs we took a buggy to the other end of the site, after looking at the Temple of Hera. Bypassed the eerie Catacombes and the Temple of Concord before arriving at the Temple of Zeus and Hercules. Talk about hedging your bets! The site is immense and we didn't do it justice.

After an expensive coffee, the fellas took the buggy back while Joséphine and I walked back stopping off at the Villa Aurea, which had been home to William Hardcastle, militaryman and archaeologist in the 1920's.
Sightseeing is hungry work and as luck would have it, we ended up in Porto Empodocle,where Andrea Camalleri, the author of Montalbano was born.

We found a restaurant called "Grotto di Vigata"which had been a haunt of the author but once again, no sign of the main man.A good note to end our independant travel on as now it was time to head for Trapani and Joséphine's Mum's house where we'll be staying for the next week.
Joséphine had warned us about Sicilian family life but we weren't really prepared to have so many people in and out of the house and at the table all the time. Mama is well supported by her neighbour and her family which is of course great but it means that Joséphine has to take a bit of a b&ck seat which doesn't go down well.Dinner consisted of snails from the garden and delicious meatballs in tomato sauce by the end of which we were pretty tired and so sloped off to bed.