Friday in Agrigento

Blog for Agrigento/Syracuse: I have to say that last Friday goes down as one of the best days of my life. Julie, Jason, Kat and I went to Agrigento to visit the Valley of the Temples. I didn’t know what to expect. I had seen pictures of the site but pictures are often misleading, especially when it comes to ancient ruins. This time though the pictures didn’t give the place justice. We had to wake up at the crack of dawn in order to catch the buses that would take us the four hours to Agrigento. I wasn’t looking forward to spending eight hours on a bus to only spend four hours in the city but after getting there and seeing the ruins it was totally worth the trip. When we got to the site and bought our tickets I literally ran through the gates in order to get near the ruins. I was like a kid in a candy store. The first part of the valley was open and you could run and climb all over the fallen blocks of temples and baths. I did just that. I climbed on these ruins like I was on a playground. I felt like a kid all over again running and jumping all over the place. I couldn’t get enough of all these ruins that used to be places of worship. Standing there for a second and touching the rocks I could really feel the history of the place. It’s hard to describe the feelings I had actually seeing and touching places that these ancient peoples had been. Its one thing to learn about these ancient cultures and see the structures they built in pictures and quite another to actually be able to touch them. It has confirmed for me just how much I love ancient history and how much I want to be able to work in places like this discovering new things about the lives of these people. One thing that shocked me was the size of these temples. I climbed on the ruins of the temple to Castor and Pollex and stood next to one of the columns that was still standing. I tried to hug the column and my arms barely made it half way around. I can only imagine what this looked like when it was all still standing. It must have been a site to behold. The four of us went to Syracuse on Saturday in order to complete a Greek weekend. Syracuse was everything I imagined an old Greek city to be. The streets were clean and beautifully paved. The buildings were amazingly well kept and everything about the city screamed old. The one thing I was disappointed with was the way the ancient temple to Athena was converted into a catholic church. The columns were filled in with concrete what used to be an amazing building was now nothing more than a church. The classicist in me was screaming at the way it was changed, but if it was either change it or knock it down than I'm glad it was at least somewhat preserved. All in all this was a great weekend filled with amazing sites and wonderful adventures. It was exactly what I imagined staying in Sicily would be like.