Had a late breakfast at 8.30 & after discussing with Luca, our host decided to go to Trapani on the north west coast tomorrow. Walked down to the bus station & enquired about buses to Trapani & then caught a bus down to the Valley of the Temples where there are a string of Greek temple ruins dating back to the mid 500s BC. They include the ruins of the largest Temple ever found of Greek origin, that of Zeus, which took 70 years but was never completed. The scale of the ruins is almost impossible to believe & the parts lying on the ground attest to its immensity. From here we walked down to a smaller one & then started to climb gently up along an escarpment dotted with various temples in various states of ruin or repair. As we were returning down we heard the squeal of brakes & a loud bang which we found out later was a car hitting a stone wall head on at speed.

Tiring of our tour after a couple of hours we set out along the road towards Agrigenta to find the museum with the discovered relics looking for a promised cafe & bar for a well earned drink Tragically there was neither bar nor cafe so we just had to face the museum with only our
mineral water to sustain us.

The museum was vast & very well labelled in English in contrast to the site which had relatively few signs in English. The exhibits included some beautifully decorated Greek vases & several excellent fragments of statues & a telamon from the site. A telamon is a giant statue which was
incorporated in a wall between pillars, as a support for the roof & this one was for the temple of Zeus.

After the museum we took one of the town buses to its terminus in a suburb near the sea full of what looked like blocks of state housing units. We just stayed on the bus & returned to the town centre, staggered home & had a very welcome cup of tea.