Northwestern Sicily (cont)

And fishermen

We visited Selinunte, another Greek city, wonderfully sited by the coast. It must have been a drag having to build a temple to each separate god – perhaps that was one driver towards the idea of believing in only one god. (It’s a shame then that we don’t all hear the same messages from the one god).

This one didn’t pass the passage of time so well, but was apparently one of the largest ever built, as we discovered by walking round and over the remains.

As we had been told, it is easy to find little harbours and ports to stop beside

Motorhoming is alive and well in Sicily – there were no less than eleven vans staying on the night we stayed here – lord knows what it must be like in summer!

The price of these oranges is not per kilo – it’s per crate!

When the next bottle of orange juice runs out we’re on to the ‘freshly crushed’ 

At the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento we saw more Greek remains and an old goat

We spent the New Year at nearby Porto Empedocle with a couple from Bristol who happened to turn up by the harbour at the same time as us. The Italians see the New Year in with fireworks, which are on sale everywhere, in supermarkets, in shops and on the street

We saw the New Year with an excellent dinner provided by our new found friends, much drinking and good conversation and sparklers purchased from this street stall.

We have now moved away from the coast into the centre where we spend the night in the centre of Piazza Armerina, in a large car park which in the morning became the vegetable market. The sides of the space, which are about 100 x 300 meters, was surrounded by vegetable sellers large and small, with one or two even selling from the back of their cars.

We bought a few veg to last us a couple of days, but with mountains of fresh veg readily available we can enjoy fresh, low food-miles as we like without doing any more than stopping as we pass a suitable stall.

This is a typical street in the centre of town. Note the limited facilities the Sicilian houseperson as for drying the washing!

We have now moved on to nearby Villa Del Casale, a Roman villa said to have the best and most extensive preserved mosaics in the world. We have just visited the villa, but the photos are still in the camera. We are parked in the car park of the small restaurant next to the villa where we had a light meal last night which we so enjoyed that we are going back for lunch today.

Lastly, it would be only fair to talk about the downsides, of which there seem to be few except the litter which is almost everywhere. The communal bins get filled to overflowing from all the adjacent flats (only a tiny proportion of people have a house of any description, and those houses that there are packed in like those in the picture), so litter gets blown about and no one appears to pick it up, which made this recycling ‘facility’ all the more strange!