la bella sicilia (part four)

the view of my hotel from the temple of concord, agrigento

more sicily pictures! today, everything is greek and flowering almonds. there might be an olive or two, too. these are from the valley of the temples at agrigento and the temple complex at selinute. the weather was awful--i wish i could have bright blue skies lighting up the backgrounds...but no. i had to stop shooting when the rain came down as the leica no es waterproof.

western sicily has the most greek ruins outside of greece, and agrigento's temple of concord is the second largest extant greek temple, only surpassed by the parthenon in size. the ruins at selinute are huge and largely...still ruined. there are only a few standing temples there and the rest are still in piles of stone, as they fell centuries ago.

enjoy!

almond blossoms flowering on very old trees--i prefer these to cherries any day

and the almond blossoms were everywhere! i was in agrigento for the festival of the almond blossom...which i actually didn't go to, but i heard it all night

really really really old olive tree with massively gnarled trunk

almond blossoms and the temple of concord--this is the best preserved temple at the site

temple of concord--i didn't do anything to the color of this picture, this really is what it looks like in the evening

close up of the temple of concord

side view of the temple of concord--wish i could have gotten behind that fence!

the view of the actual valley beneath the hilltop of the valley of the temples...does that make sense?

lovely ridge ruins between two temples

temple of hera lacinia

temple of hera lacinia at night--again, the light is what it is and the temples just seem to glow in the twilight + flood lamps

temple E at selinute--those yellow flowers are oxalis, which i have to believe are invasive in sicily

interior, temple E (also known as temple of hera)

close up of column and floor, temple E

the cool thing about the temples in sicily is that rather than being made of marble, which would have had to have come from somewhere else, the greeks used tufa--volcanic stone--which was readily available everywhere. you can see the texture created by the tufa here--totally different from smooth marble, but still strong and effective

leaving selinute to drive to palermo in some godawful weather, i finally noticed how timed parking in sicily works--check out the cool dial-y thingy you're supposed to set when you pull into a spot! very clever...

next time: palermo, and maybe monreale, then home!

la bella sicilia (part three)

i vendicari

i went to texas and left everyone hanging with the sicily pics! sorry about that. i'm back, and ready to continue the display, especially because i have pics from texas i now need to put up...so many images, so little time.

this part is the town of noto and my rental car adventures from syracuse to agrigento. noto is quite lovely and i wish i had more than a day to explore it--the entire town was destroyed by an earthquake in the late 17th century then completely rebuilt by the end of the same century. all the buildings are the same color and are high baroque, meaning there are crazy waves in the façades. the second set of pictures are from the drive, which was an adventure in and of itself. learning to drive in houston and being generally aggressive helped me tremendously to drive *well* in sicily, which is such a loaded phrase it defies clarification. no one drives well in sicily. you just hang on and pray a lot, faithful or no. enjoy!

noto with a cornerful of hoodlums

pretty stairs--surprisingly regular

noto is built on a steep hill, and this is one of the more gentle examples

crazy baroque fountain

beautiful concave façade area near noto's duomo

from the front of noto's duomo--the tilt-shift isn't working as well as i'd like here, but it still gives an idea of the feel of the space

driving to agrigento in my bitchin' ford escort! the almond trees were blooming everywhere you looked

some very tall mountain passes, senza guardrails, to be had in sicily

adorable little cinquecento--i wish my life allowed me a toy like this

you never know what you're going to see from the road in sicily: elephants...

...or further proof sicilians hate their children...

...but i think this is my favorite--via charles darwin in gela

also there are tons of bikers on the road who must have the biggest huevos in the entire nation because those roads were dangerous for those of us encased in metal

and, of course, massively impressive greek (yes, greek) ruins

next time: the ruins of agrigento and other sites in NW sicily!

la bella sicilia (part two)

the vendicari

days five, six and seven were spent in syracuse/ortygia, at the vendicari nature preserve, and briefly in noto (pictures for noto will be in part three). syracuse really has two primary areas to see, syracuse itself (which has greek ruins) and a tiny island off its coast called ortygia (which has pretty much everything else). syracuse has a tremendous history--it has been "occupied" by phoenecians, carthaginians, greeks, romans, arabs/moors/saracens, normans, and now italians. actually, that's the whole history of sicily, too--it's just more apparent in syracuse. homer wrote about it in "the iliad," which reminds me that i need to do some remedial reading soon...

la fontana di arethusa--an odd little freshwater ("acqua dolce" in italian, which i love) spring right next to the ionian sea

il duomo of syracuse...on ortygia

the piazza in front of the duomo--lovely baroque space

interior, il duomo--you can see the 5th c BC temple integrated into the structure

coast off of ortygia

massive temple structure on ortygia--i think it is the temple of apollo

back onto mainland syracuse: this is the greek theatre, still in use today

the vendicari! it is an incredibly beautiful place, and amazing because it exists--it is one of the only unspoiled, protected patches of pure coastline left in sicily

vendicari beach with old tuna cannery in the background--i have absolutely no idea what those plant-like, ball-shaped things are all over the beach, but unfortunately they were interspersed with a disturbing number of syringes. not sure if they washed up from north africa or another part of sicily.

the vendicari is a nature preserve that a large number of migratory birds pass through on their way back to africa--these are cormorants and egrets on the ruined house

ruin and clover at the vendicari

parts of the vendicari reminded me of new mexico--i think it's the prickly pear, which is an invasive species there

tilt-shift rock and prickly pear! i'm loving this effect.

the old tunnery, which i think is a word

la bella sicilia (part one)

the view from my hotel window in atlanta (elwood blues was right: the planes flew by so often that after a while you really don't hear them)

for the past three christmases, rich has given me the tremendous gift of letting me go anywhere i want to go for one week in february while he stays home with the kids, and this year i picked sicily. i had never been there before and the journey didn't disappoint--it took 60 hours to get there because of snow in rome (!) and it kind of continued in that vein for the rest of the trip. it wasn't relaxing but it was quite an adventure.

and, as mentioned earlier, i've got a new camera so i'm abusing the tilt-shift feature something terrible. apologies in advance...

day three (days one and two were in hotlanta then on planes): rome (12 hour layover), then catania late at night

clivo dei publicii, 2. this is the top of the aventino hill in rome and a side-view of the convent i lived in with 39 other lovely people in the fall of 1988

romans playing in a snowy circus maximus

the colosseum in snow

largo argentina and rome's cat sanctuary in snow

day four: catania to syracuse/siracusa

amazingly, i was awake at 4:00 in the morning when these fireworks went off in catania (for the feast of st. agatha)

view from the hotel window

another view--seriously, i'm way into the tilt-shift

it is tough to see, but if you look closely at the top center of this photo you can see the tip of mt. etna, which was smoking beautifully this morning--it erupted just a few hours later (and closed the airport for the day). and how brave am i for staying across the street from the palazzo di giustizia, which has a tendency to get blown up during mafia trials?

catania centrale train station, which, odd for the second largest city in sicily, had a bit of an end-of-the-world vibe going on but was needed to get to...

...syracuse!

look for part two soon...