The Valley of the Temples, Trip 1

Jay Bird works long hours here.  And he has 12 hour watches randomly scattered throughout the month.  Most of his watches are from 8 at night until 8 in the morning.  This means that while we are up doing school and playing, he is counting sheep and sawing logs.  Add in an out of town trip here and there and he stays pretty busy.  Occasionally, he has a whole day off, and we have no plans.  One glorious day just happened (in fact, he had three whole days in a row off), and we decided to check out one of the spots we (if it's any good) plan on taking anyone who comes to visit.

After a leisurely breakfast and little stop on base to run two small errands, we headed out on our 2ish hour trip west to the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento.  Agrigento was home to the Greeks (and others) in the 6th century BC.  There are several ancient ruins to explore.  You can not actually go into the temples, but you can get super close.  And since we showed up early, in February, on a weekday, it was blessedly quiet.  It cost us 4 euro to park and 20 euro to get in (because kids under 18 are free, woot woot).


We took a picture of the map when we first arrived.  Everyone counted that we would see five temples or ruins.  As we prepared to leave, we could only think of two, maybe three ruins that we had seen.  Apparently, we only walked through about half of the things available.  And we were there almost four hours and walked miles... which is a lot for those of us with short legs :)

This is the the Temple of Juno (Hera).  The tree in the background is a newly blossoming Almond tree and it smelt heavenly.  We didn't know it when we went, but in the next few weeks, the grounds, which are covered in Almond trees will be in full bloom!!!

Pretty Girl walked up to this tree while I tried to take a picture.  I let her stay :)

We found this fairly new walk path.  The plants that are being trained over the trellis are jasmine.  We found a few blossoms on them, and it too smelt heavenly.  It will be dizzying once the trellis is covered!

We walked down this dirt path towards the Roman Quarter.  Looking back you can see the Temple of Concordia.

I was completely unprepared to see these mosaics.  I have only seen these type things in text books.  I  spent quite a bit of time trying to get the kids to appreciate the amount of time and work that went into laying mosaic floor like this.  They were not impressed, but I was in awe.

A shepherd was herding his sheep (and a few goat) through a field near the Roman Quarter.  If you click on the picture and look behind the center Almond trees, you can see the Temple of Concordia again.  

Everyone was tired of walking.  But we saw the Temple of Concordia before heading home.  Next visit, we will be better prepared, and we will go earlier in the day so we can see it all!

I am so glad that we got to go on a little adventure this week.  It will have to serve us well as we slide back into our more normal (and less exciting) week!

If you'd like to read more about the Valley of the Temples