We’ll get to the day’s events shortly, but first we must put in a plug for our B&B and hosts in Agrigento. La Terraza di Empedocle is hands down our favorite lodging so far. The location is the best you could hope for, perched high above town on a quiet street just a few blocks from the heart of the old city. Breakfast was substantial, inspired and delicious, with fresh-made delights brought out in four different servings. Best though were the hosts, Chiara and her boyfriend, who are clearly in love with what they’re doing here. We left sorry that we couldn’t stay longer and hoping to return some day.
Rachael with Chiara, our hostess at La Terraza di Empedocle.
We had never intended to stay in or even pass through Agrigento. We only landed here as our solution to avoiding riding through two days of rain and high winds. We’re really glad we did though. There is our fine lodging of course, but it’s quite an interesting city and well worth the stop. We saw a bit of the old city last night walking to and from dinner. It looked like this:
Returning from our excellent meal at Krokos, we get a good look at Via Ataenea, the main street through the historic district.
Well, there I’ve gone and revealed that dinner was excellent so I’d better show you some of it. There are the usual grilled vegetables, but on the right is another regional specialty: potato crusted branzini.
The weather was much better this morning, so after breakfast we walked out t9 see even more of the old city. Like several of the older cities in southwest Sicily, its origins are Arabic. It is an intriguing place to walk through, exploring its narrow, twisted alleys, staircases and passageways. It looks like the principal building material was a golden sandstone, giving the quarter a warm radiance.
Colorful, but not the most promising place to live if you have a bicycle.
We hardly have any riding at all in store for us today. Our lodging is only 9 miles away in Realmonte, just above the famous Turkish Steps (Scala dei Turchi). This was part of our foul weather evasion plan - we had expected today’s riding conditions to be awful also, so we were happy to have such a short ride ahead. Fortunately, the morning has turned reasonably fair and looks to stay dry until around noon. After our short exploration of the old city we return to our room, check out at 10:30, and set off for Realmonte. We had thought to bike past the hilltop cathedral on the way, but a few steep, narrow cobblestones streets soon drained our interest in that idea.
We left town planning to stop by the cathedral, but it was too high up and difficult to get to through the maze of narrow alleys and staircases. Instead, we stopped by the lovely Church of Saint Francis of Paola.
The first four miles are almost all downhill, dropping to the sea at Porto Empedocle, a small seaside working town that was historically the port for Agrigento. Some people will know this place though as Vigata, the fictional home of Inspector Montalbano, the hero of the great Camilleri mysteries. Camilleri is from Porto Empedocle, and several of the surrounding settings (including the Turkish Steps) are recognizable in his books. There’s a statue of the inspector prominently placed in the heart of town, and a sign saying Welcome to Vigata greets you as you enter.
In Porto Empedocle, aka Vigata, the fictional setting for Andrew Camilleri’s Montalbano police procedural.
We don’t go out of our way to repeat visits to many destinations, but there was never any doubt that we’d be coming back to see the heart-stoppingly beautiful Turkish Steps again when we returned to Sicily. On our first visit, we walked down to the shore at the end of the day and enjoyed one of our most memorable seaside sunsets ever. Today though, rain is due at any hour so we went down as soon as we reached town and checked into our room.
The steps, a striking marl white limestone formation, are something you really shouldn’t miss if you come this way. They were amazing last time - and you should really look at the link to see a different take on them - but seeing them during the day with the dark stormy sky as background was spectacular too. One thing very different this time though is that you can’t walk on them any more - or at least we couldn’t today - because access is barricaded off. I have no idea what the background on this is, but we feel really lucky to have been here before at a time that you could walk out on them.
Looking back toward Porto Empedocle from the beach by the Turkish Steps
In this photo, note the orange fencing on the right that walls off the point. When we were here before we walked out on the steps, and around the bend.
We were fortunate to have about an hour of dry skies to see the steps. Just as the rains hit we were walking into a beachside cafe for lunch, and for the next hour we nursed our meal as we watched the rains pour down, and in - through a few holes in the awning that flooded out one of the other diners in the room.
It was still raining but had eased off somewhat when we finally decided to break for our room, about a half mile away. It was a sloppy walk, with water pouring down the road in rivers and cars spraying large waves in their wakes as they passed by.
Looking back at the beach and the silt plume from a flooding creek.
