Our main aim today was to visit The Valley of the Temples. This needs a blog post all of its own. We left the apartment at 08:45 and caught the 102 bus to the station. Europcar’s computer was offline so I’m really glad I had printed off our confirmation. This was kept by them and we had to fill in forms galore to get the car. We eventually left the parking at 9:40 and it took us half an hour to get out of Palermo. We stopped in Lercara Friddi at 11:40 to buy our picnic lunch ingredients.
We also enjoyed cheap espressi (€1.60) and learnt more Italian words from the owner of the alimentari. We then went straight to The Valley of the Temples.
You can park at the top or the bottom entrance. We parked at the bottom and had lunch in the car park. There are offocial taxi’s that will drive you to the top for €3 each. An absolute bargain and a necessity in the heat. We arrived at 13:45 and walked down through the site, only exiting at 15:25.
Our next mission was to find a place to stay. This is always an adventure. The two places shown on Google maps in Marina di Palma did not exist. In Licata our first stop was for espressi (read bathroom break). Such nice people who were curious about where we were from. Between the time I looked on Booking.com at availability at the hotel, and us getting there it was fully booked. We then attempted to drive to the B&B that still showed a room being available. But we got caught in narrow streets that the car could barely fit down. Giving up that for a joke we eventually decided to head to the next town. We checked in to Hotel degli Angeli in Falconara at 18:30. The first thing we did was head down to the beach and swim. We went to Il Maneggio for supper. We had a carafe of wine. Antipasti and pasta (€52.50) and came back to the hotel.
There was some firework display going on and that carried on very late. I twisted my ankle yesterday and was hoping to not walk too much. 10 916 steps, 5.67km for the day which is not bad considering we were in the car for so long.
Italy 2018 