Agrigento is a place that every visitor of Sicily should try to make. Especially if you are into archeological things. Agrigento is well known for its well preserved Greek temples that date back to 580 B.C. !! Now I understand why they call America the New World. Wikipedia has a page about Agrigento that has a lot of information (LINK).
We stayed the weekend in Agrigento to make sure that we got all the sights in. Plus its about a 2 hour drive from where we are on the island. I was excited because one of the few surf stores was supposed to be in Agrigento, but after searching the town for an hour I found out that the surf store went out of business. 🙁 I guess not a whole lot of demand.
We found a great restaurant for dinner called Expanificio, which I highly recommend if your in Agrigento.
The temples were amazing. We also found Jessica’s “favorite spot of Sicily so far” …..the Turkish steps that were at a nearby coastline. On the way home we decided to take a different route home that was more of a “scenic route”. Along the way home we found the Castello di Falconara, which was a stunning castle on the coastline on the way to Gela.
Also along the “scenic route” we made a stop at “The Villa Romana del Casale, Piazza Armerina”. This is a recently uncovered Roman hunting lodge with very cool mosaics that are supposedly unrivalled in the Roman world in terms of their quality and extent. Lonely Planet recommended this place in their top 20 places to “not to miss” in Sicily. It was just okay in our opinion. Didn’t compare to the Greek ruins. Near this historic site we stopped in for lunch at a great little place called Pepito in the town of Piazza Armerina.
If you are making the trip to Agrigento I definitely recommend the scenic route for at least one way of your trip. The road that we used was the 117bis. Awesome hills and expansive views of the countryside.
Another great Sicilian trip! There are so many places on this one island.
