Day 5: Ragusa to Naro via Licata and Agrigento

The place we were staying in in Ragusa last night was a bed and breakfast, but we weren't entirely sure what was happening with the breakfast. When we woke up this morning, we found it had been laid out for us in the communal kitchen outside our room.

It was a very sweet breakfast, featuring croissants and chocolate cake  

Once we'd finished stuffing ourselves, we went out for a walk to see Ragusa in the morning sunshine.

The view towards Ragusa Superiore was much better in this light  

We walked along the narrow street towards the cathedral again.

The cathedral looked beautiful with the blue sky behind it.

We hadn't realised when we booked to stay in Ragusa that some of the Montalbano TV series is filmed here. We found one of the views from the show, but I don't think I can quite pull off Montalbano's look 

We had time before we checked out to walk a bit further through the town, towards the gardens.

We passed Ragusa's other church, San Giuseppe.

It was already another hot day, so it was nice to get under the shade of the palm trees for a bit...

...and enjoy the views out across the countryside again  

Then it was back up through the town for a final look at the cathedral before setting off towards our next destination.

The main place we were visiting today was Agrigento, but as that was over a two hour drive away from Ragusa, we were planning to break our journey in a seaside town called Licata.  As we set off in the car, we had a good view up towards Ragusa Superiore.

As you can see in this photo, we managed to get stuck in a queue behind Ragusa's tourist train, so we ended up having longer than expected to admire the view  

It took about two hours to get to Licata in the end and there wasn't much of a view of the sea because there was a port in the way, but it turned out to have a pretty old town.

We walked through some gardens...

...where I found an impressively large cactus...

...and then we caught sight of the town's main church in the distance.

The church had a beautiful dome, although like everything in Licata it looked a bit faded.

Once we were at the church we weren't far from the main street. We had a view from there up towards the castle above the town.

We came to a square, with what I assume must have been the town hall.

As we'd been walking around we'd been looking for a restaurant to get lunch, but failing to find anything more than a cafe that was open. We eventually found a place just past the town hall, where the waitress told us that they were the only restaurant open in Licata today. We'd just started looking at the menu when she reappeared to say that there was a smell of gas in the kitchen and so they were only able to offer a handful of items on the menu. Luckily this included pizza, so we were fine  

They didn't have much on offer in the way of pudding, only something called "semifreddo" which we didn't really understand what it was. Tim decided to be brave and order one anyway; it turned out to be a bit like ice-cream, but not quite.

As we were walking back to the car after lunch, I caught sight of a thermometer on a pharmacy which confirmed that it really was very hot!

From Licata, we continued onwards towards Agrigento, which was another half an hour or so drive. We didn't actually want to visit the town of Agrigento itself, which according to the guidebook isn't terribly attractive, but an archeaological site outside of the town called Valle dei Templi.

Although the name suggests a valley of temples, we soon discovered it's actually more of a hill with temples on it  After paying €12 each to get in, we climbed a sandy path uphill and soon got our first view of (part of!) a temple.

There were originally seven temples at the site, which were constructed by the Greeks in the fifth and sixth centuries BC.

Today they are some of the best preserved examples of ancient Greek architecture outside of Greece, although not all of them are still intact.

We followed the path past several ruins, with views in the distance towards the modern town of Agrigento.

After a while we came to the remains of the temple of Heracles.

This one is believed to have been built in the sixth century BC.

From there the path proceeded steeply uphill towards the best preserved temple.

This is the temple of Concordia.

As we got closer we could see how absolutely enormous it is.

Here's a picture with me for scale  

In the distance we could just make out the tantalising remains of another temple, the temple of Juno. Unfortunately it looked like a bit of a trek and we didn't really have time because we'd arranged to be let into our accommodation at 5pm.

We turned around and began our walk back down to the car park. I'd definitely like to come back here one day and explore further, although maybe in October when it might not be 35 degrees!

As we started driving back onto the main road, we got a final view of the temples  

Because the guidebook wasn't very complimentary about Agrigento, we're staying overnight in a nearby town called Naro. It took us about 20 minutes to drive there and another 10 minutes to drive around very narrow streets trying to find our apartment! We found it in the end and it's nice and comfortable inside  

There's a cosy area with a table/chairs and a fridge...

...which then leads into a bedroom that features a bunk bed as well as a double bed.

It's got great air con and the wi-fi is working okay. The lady who owns it was very friendly and gave us a bowl of cherry-flavoured granita to cool us down, which was a really lovely surprise  

We seem to be right next door to the local church and have already heard the bells ringing a couple of times. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they don't start ringing really early tomorrow morning