Adventure Is Out There_ Italy : Sicily!

A Picture is worth a thousand words!

A week in Sicily

There is so much I could write about this week but I truly do believe that a picture says so much more. I have a feeling that my blog will be filled with a lot of pictures to show the adventures we had in Italy!

Monday September 29^th

Really this story starts the night before! Trying to pack our bags… they could only weigh 22lbs and had certain length and width requirements. Yay us!

We started of the day of travel leaving the villa on a bus headed for Rome! From there we took a plane to Palermo. Then we took a bus to our hotel, the hotel Columbia, which will be our home bass fro the next four days. Well my first impressions of the city are not the best not going to lie. It’s dirty, as in trash piled up everywhere, dog poop on the streets, and a few passed out homeless people along the streets. As week went on I grew to really like the city regardless of the trash. It really is quite beautiful and filled with so much to do.

(Sorry no pictures of travel for this trip to Palermo… but lots of pictures of the places we explored this week!)

Tuesday September 30^th

Today we went to Selinunte! It was a few hours away from Palermo. We took a bus and had a really nice driver that will drive us around for the week. His name is Carmelo. This archeological site had three temples. The best part was that we could walk in the temples ruins or on the columns that had fallen! It was really cool to be able to touch these thousands of year old ruins. It was also very very hot outside so the best part of the day was after the archeological site we went to this little beach bar and swam for the rest of the day! The funny thing about getting to the beach was that we scaled down the side of the cliff! Pretty scary but hey it was worth it! The beach was great we were able to swim for a few hours and lay out on the beach eat food all while we have these ancient ruins in the background!

I really like the sun peeking through the temple..

so there may be many more sunny pictures to come

Mark showing us how large the columns are! Massive!

Chris and Bailey just being cute.

Modeling on the temples.

The most amazing beach I have ever been to! What a great way to end the day.

Little place we stopped to get towels for the beach!

View from the bus stop of the beach we are going to.

Wednesday October 1^st

Today we went to Agrigento!! Yay one of my topics! It was great to see it in person! Really fun to research the temples! But it was so astonishing and amazing to see these magnificent ancient temples in person. Not to mention the setting of the temples is amazing. Up on so hills able to see everything for miles! Sadly we could not go into the temples but they are so well persevered, rival the temples in Greece. We were able to see the temple of Juno, Concordia, Zeus, Hercules, and some other ruins along the way. After seeing the temples we ate lunch in the gardens located close to the temples. It was the perfect spot and we were able to walk around after and see the beauty of the gardens.

Temple of Concordia

Temple of Juno

Temple of Castor and Plox

Bailey and Chris in the gardens after lunch.

Thursday October 2^nd

Today we went to Zingaro which is a nature reserve. This was a free day for us. We hiked for a good hour or so along the side off the hills with trails veering off to different beaches. To say the least it was on of the most beautiful places I have been. I’m sorry I took about two picture the whole day 1) because I was being lazy and did not want to get my camera out of my backpack and 2) I was enjoying the hike and the beauty all around me. After hiking for an hour or so we stopped at a little rocky beach with the most amazing blue water! Mark and Rett let me barrow there snorkel which I broke and felt so horrible about but luckily I had an extra head band and Mark was very handy and able to fix it. Whoo hoo! So we continued to snorkel and swim around in this beautiful place! Also I attempted to water color and found out that I am very bad at doing landscapes so yeah it did not turn out how I wanted it to. After attempting to watercolor we hiked back and got on the bus to return to Palermo. It was an amazing day by far my favorite so far!

So these are the only pictures i took today! Hope you can see how beautiful it is from the few pictures I have!

Our beach spot!

Friday October 3^rd

Today is my moms birthday! I sent here the picture of all us from Agrigento holding up the happy birthday sign. She loved it

Also today we are leaving Palermo and heading to Catania! I’m not really sure how long the drive was due to the fact I was drifting in and out of sleep and when that happens I have zero concept of time. Half way through the drive we stopped at an old Roman villa (blanking on the name right now). A very wealthy man built this place and every floor was covered in mosaics and the walls I’m sure had some amazing frescos back in the day. The floors are very well preserved and were amazing to see. I wish I could travel back in time and see what these places would have been like. Actually visiting all the places we have learned about it pretty amazing, way way way better then just reading a text book and seeing the picture they choose to put in it.