Travel to Agrigento
Apr. 27th, 2014 04:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskiteToday was another travel day, with the goal of moving south and west to see two more highlights of our trip: the Valle dei Templi (Valley of Temples), which is a collection of Greek temples, and the Riserva Naturale Macalube de Aragona, which seems to be Sicily's equivalent of Yellowstone's geysers, though on a much smaller and less dramatic scale. Agrigento itself appears to be nothing special, but is a good staging point for visiting the two destinations.
We dawdled over our final breakfast at Proserpine, paid up, and haggled over some of their homemade organic preserves. We'd originally discussed the medium-size containers, but when it came time to actually buy them, Fabio put small containers in the bag. I protested that the cost was OK for the medium containers, but troppo caro (too expensive) for the small ones. After some back and forth between him, his daughter, and his wife, they agreed to give us the medium containers for the same price. All of which goes to show that although you shouldn't necessarily bargain like a starving beggar in an Arab souk, neither should you present yourself as eager to be fleeced. Proof that all was well after the haggling was done was that I was embraced and given a two-cheek kiss by Fabio, who also slipped us a teeny container of local honey and four oranges for the road as lagniappe (which I always thought was Italian, but is actually French in origin).
The drive down to Agrigento was simple and pleasant, despite rain that occasionally became heavy and a long stretch of construction along the main highway we were taking. The GPS sent us on a couple unnecessary detours, and once completely lost track of where we were with respect to the road, but by that time, we already had a good sense of where we were going, and successfully blundered onwards on our own instincts until the GPS recovered is wits.
Although we gradually moved out of the area of really high peaks and really deep valleys, it wasn't like we moved into actual flat land; Sicily remains highly three-dimensional, with many hills and valleys and little truly flat land. That's one of the pleasures of travel: replacing a flat and boring two-dimensional map of region names, which is typically all we ever learn in basic geography class, with a more visceral image of a country. I suspect more students would become geographers, or at least would remember their geography lessons better, if high-school geography were presented through pictures (or nowadays, Google Earth) rather than flat maps, and if the resulting topography were tied more closely to how its constraints influenced the local people.
Speaking of which, one thing I haven't mentioned yet is how many of Sicily's main highways are raised, and how many just bull on by boring a hole through the landscape. Even in areas where a North American road designer would simply hug the ground, a Sicilian designer seems to prefer to raise the road on pillars. Some of the elevations seem to be only about 3 to 5 m, but the elevations are often dramatic: 10 to at least 30 m, and in the latter case, the roads seemed so unbalanced you'd expect them to topple over in the slightest wind. This seems an odd engineering choice given the risk of volcanic earthquakes, but I speculate that there are two likely explanations. First, given Sicily's long history of agriculture and pastoralism, it seems likely that designers made an effort to accommodate traditional movement patterns. Second, the "cut and fill" technique of road construction used in North America, which involves removing the tops of hills that get in the way of the road and using the removed materials to fill in valleys along the route, might be too expensive given the high variations in topography. I suppose it's also possible that given the high cost of fuel in Europe, someone did a careful calculation and decided that the overall fuel savings from level but elevated roads would outweigh any increased construction costs. Need to figure out whether any of my clients or colleagues might know, or even our hosts, for that matter.
The second feature of the highways is how many of them dive right through the heart of mountains. For the main roads used to carry a nation's infrastructure traffic (e.g., food and commercial products), it's not really possible to rely on switchbacks; that approach would slow down travel too much and make it too vulnerable to interruptions (e.g., landslides, snow in the mountains). So the engineers have instead bored straight through the heart of any inconvenient mountains, where a North American engineer would simply build a long, sweeping approach. (You see this a lot in upstate Vermont, where you spend a lot of highway time climbing or descending.) Some of the tunnels are quite long; I recall one that was nearly 2 km, and Shoshanna agrees that one was at least a kilometre long. The only problem with the tunnels is that on a sunny day, you can't see inside them until you're already inside; at highway speeds (100+ km/h), you have zero time to react if someone stops suddenly just inside the entrance, or if a rock falls and rolls inside. A few of the better tunnels had bright lights at the start to compensate for this problem, but most did not. After a while, I just resigned myself to the fact that running into anything was a remote probability, and just kept driving.
We'd originally chosen a B&B on the western end of Agrigento, since the city itself seemed to offer little to attract us, and being on or near the beach seemed likely to be more interesting. Unfortunately, our B&B proved to be at the bottom of a slope that would have been marked with a skull and crossbones if it had been a ski slope. Fortunately, the rain had stopped long enough ago that the road surface was dry, otherwise we'd have slid downhill into the Mediterranean. Another surprise came when we rang the doorbell; our host came out, looking a bit stressed, and told us that his roof had sprung a major leak and that our bed and room were soaked. Fortunately, he was a kind and diligent soul and had already arranged a new B&B for us, in an even better location. He took us to our new home, the B&B San Leone, which was a short distance from our original choice, and about a block closer to the ocean and the main restaurant strips. Our hosts, Domingo and Sara, greeted us enthusiastically, gave us a quick orientation to the area, and turned us loose.
I was craving protein, so we dropped our bags and walked down to the lungomare ("along the sea"), which is where most of the restaurants are. I had a nice pork cutlet, satisfying my need for protein, and Shoshanna had a tomato-ey soup in a bowl piled high with mussels. Then we went for a long stroll along the beach, stopping for a gelato and to enjoy the crashing waves and sun. While we sat, an elderly and very cheerful Italian gentleman stopped by to ask us if we might be French. He seemed very pleased that we were Canadian, callling us friends,and offering Shoshanna two coffee hard candies, warning her that she should not give them to me. He shook our hands heartily, and went on with his stroll.
We continued on and found the second good restaurant our hosts had recommended, and planned to go there for dinner the next day, which would be our 11th wedding anniversary. (But our 15th year together -- yikes, how did that happen!) On the way home, the black clouds moved in with a vengeance, and it started pouring as it only seems to do in the tropics and near-tropics. I was in Goretex, so no problem for me, but Shoshanna wasn't. I spotted an overhang, and we dashed under cover as the skies opened up on us. Since the wind was blowing much of the rain at a steep angle, I also stood between Shoshanna and the wind to help keep her at least a little dry. It was a pleasant storm, and eventually the rain stopped long enough for us to dash back to the B&B and put up our feet before dinner.
Dinner that night was at Al Porticciolo, a restaurant only a couple blocks from our B&B that got good reviews on TripAdvisor. We had a nice dinner, sharing an eggplant couscous first. I had a Calabrese thin-crust pizza, with spicy local salami, Gorgonzola, cipollini, and spicey tomato sauce, and Shoshanna had a shellfish medley in tomato sauce on rice. But the most fun was people-watching. The table beside us had what seemed to be a large-ish family dinner, with about 20 people, and without any overt signs of sanyone organizing the seating, the family neatly divided into men at the head of the table, women in the middle, and kids at the end (including one poor tween who clearly didn't want to sit with the adults, nor yet with the kids). All the kids had smartphones, and in between boisterous moments, stayed busy texting friends; the tween was working two phones simultaneously. Mostly they were also very well dressed, with suits or sweater/shirt combos for the men and nice casual wear for the women. The kids were just kids.
The wait staff were also interesting. Several, including our waiter, were busily watching a soccer game at the cash, which was midway between the kitchen and the dining room. Most of them had the standard white apron of service staff. But there were a couple others, possibly members of the family that ran the restaurant, who were more active and more interestingly dressed. The guy who appeared to be the head waiter (one of the first Sicilians I've seen who had a full beard, though very closely cropped) had a beautiful suit jacket, with two-tone patterning (matte for the main fabric, but with shiny patches forming a subtle pattern), and nice slacks, but was wearing a t-shirt with a drawing on it (couldn't make out the design) and sneakers. Another waiter came to offer us dessert, and when I asked for a menu, he proudly proclaimed "I am the menu", and proceeded to list the options. I had a nice tartuffo, and Shoshanna had a tasty panecotta, which despite the name, seems to have no bread products in it.
Nice walk home afterwards to a comfortable and quiet bedroom, and a good night's sleep.
We dawdled over our final breakfast at Proserpine, paid up, and haggled over some of their homemade organic preserves. We'd originally discussed the medium-size containers, but when it came time to actually buy them, Fabio put small containers in the bag. I protested that the cost was OK for the medium containers, but troppo caro (too expensive) for the small ones. After some back and forth between him, his daughter, and his wife, they agreed to give us the medium containers for the same price. All of which goes to show that although you shouldn't necessarily bargain like a starving beggar in an Arab souk, neither should you present yourself as eager to be fleeced. Proof that all was well after the haggling was done was that I was embraced and given a two-cheek kiss by Fabio, who also slipped us a teeny container of local honey and four oranges for the road as lagniappe (which I always thought was Italian, but is actually French in origin).
The drive down to Agrigento was simple and pleasant, despite rain that occasionally became heavy and a long stretch of construction along the main highway we were taking. The GPS sent us on a couple unnecessary detours, and once completely lost track of where we were with respect to the road, but by that time, we already had a good sense of where we were going, and successfully blundered onwards on our own instincts until the GPS recovered is wits.
Although we gradually moved out of the area of really high peaks and really deep valleys, it wasn't like we moved into actual flat land; Sicily remains highly three-dimensional, with many hills and valleys and little truly flat land. That's one of the pleasures of travel: replacing a flat and boring two-dimensional map of region names, which is typically all we ever learn in basic geography class, with a more visceral image of a country. I suspect more students would become geographers, or at least would remember their geography lessons better, if high-school geography were presented through pictures (or nowadays, Google Earth) rather than flat maps, and if the resulting topography were tied more closely to how its constraints influenced the local people.
Speaking of which, one thing I haven't mentioned yet is how many of Sicily's main highways are raised, and how many just bull on by boring a hole through the landscape. Even in areas where a North American road designer would simply hug the ground, a Sicilian designer seems to prefer to raise the road on pillars. Some of the elevations seem to be only about 3 to 5 m, but the elevations are often dramatic: 10 to at least 30 m, and in the latter case, the roads seemed so unbalanced you'd expect them to topple over in the slightest wind. This seems an odd engineering choice given the risk of volcanic earthquakes, but I speculate that there are two likely explanations. First, given Sicily's long history of agriculture and pastoralism, it seems likely that designers made an effort to accommodate traditional movement patterns. Second, the "cut and fill" technique of road construction used in North America, which involves removing the tops of hills that get in the way of the road and using the removed materials to fill in valleys along the route, might be too expensive given the high variations in topography. I suppose it's also possible that given the high cost of fuel in Europe, someone did a careful calculation and decided that the overall fuel savings from level but elevated roads would outweigh any increased construction costs. Need to figure out whether any of my clients or colleagues might know, or even our hosts, for that matter.
The second feature of the highways is how many of them dive right through the heart of mountains. For the main roads used to carry a nation's infrastructure traffic (e.g., food and commercial products), it's not really possible to rely on switchbacks; that approach would slow down travel too much and make it too vulnerable to interruptions (e.g., landslides, snow in the mountains). So the engineers have instead bored straight through the heart of any inconvenient mountains, where a North American engineer would simply build a long, sweeping approach. (You see this a lot in upstate Vermont, where you spend a lot of highway time climbing or descending.) Some of the tunnels are quite long; I recall one that was nearly 2 km, and Shoshanna agrees that one was at least a kilometre long. The only problem with the tunnels is that on a sunny day, you can't see inside them until you're already inside; at highway speeds (100+ km/h), you have zero time to react if someone stops suddenly just inside the entrance, or if a rock falls and rolls inside. A few of the better tunnels had bright lights at the start to compensate for this problem, but most did not. After a while, I just resigned myself to the fact that running into anything was a remote probability, and just kept driving.
We'd originally chosen a B&B on the western end of Agrigento, since the city itself seemed to offer little to attract us, and being on or near the beach seemed likely to be more interesting. Unfortunately, our B&B proved to be at the bottom of a slope that would have been marked with a skull and crossbones if it had been a ski slope. Fortunately, the rain had stopped long enough ago that the road surface was dry, otherwise we'd have slid downhill into the Mediterranean. Another surprise came when we rang the doorbell; our host came out, looking a bit stressed, and told us that his roof had sprung a major leak and that our bed and room were soaked. Fortunately, he was a kind and diligent soul and had already arranged a new B&B for us, in an even better location. He took us to our new home, the B&B San Leone, which was a short distance from our original choice, and about a block closer to the ocean and the main restaurant strips. Our hosts, Domingo and Sara, greeted us enthusiastically, gave us a quick orientation to the area, and turned us loose.
I was craving protein, so we dropped our bags and walked down to the lungomare ("along the sea"), which is where most of the restaurants are. I had a nice pork cutlet, satisfying my need for protein, and Shoshanna had a tomato-ey soup in a bowl piled high with mussels. Then we went for a long stroll along the beach, stopping for a gelato and to enjoy the crashing waves and sun. While we sat, an elderly and very cheerful Italian gentleman stopped by to ask us if we might be French. He seemed very pleased that we were Canadian, callling us friends,and offering Shoshanna two coffee hard candies, warning her that she should not give them to me. He shook our hands heartily, and went on with his stroll.
We continued on and found the second good restaurant our hosts had recommended, and planned to go there for dinner the next day, which would be our 11th wedding anniversary. (But our 15th year together -- yikes, how did that happen!) On the way home, the black clouds moved in with a vengeance, and it started pouring as it only seems to do in the tropics and near-tropics. I was in Goretex, so no problem for me, but Shoshanna wasn't. I spotted an overhang, and we dashed under cover as the skies opened up on us. Since the wind was blowing much of the rain at a steep angle, I also stood between Shoshanna and the wind to help keep her at least a little dry. It was a pleasant storm, and eventually the rain stopped long enough for us to dash back to the B&B and put up our feet before dinner.
Dinner that night was at Al Porticciolo, a restaurant only a couple blocks from our B&B that got good reviews on TripAdvisor. We had a nice dinner, sharing an eggplant couscous first. I had a Calabrese thin-crust pizza, with spicy local salami, Gorgonzola, cipollini, and spicey tomato sauce, and Shoshanna had a shellfish medley in tomato sauce on rice. But the most fun was people-watching. The table beside us had what seemed to be a large-ish family dinner, with about 20 people, and without any overt signs of sanyone organizing the seating, the family neatly divided into men at the head of the table, women in the middle, and kids at the end (including one poor tween who clearly didn't want to sit with the adults, nor yet with the kids). All the kids had smartphones, and in between boisterous moments, stayed busy texting friends; the tween was working two phones simultaneously. Mostly they were also very well dressed, with suits or sweater/shirt combos for the men and nice casual wear for the women. The kids were just kids.
The wait staff were also interesting. Several, including our waiter, were busily watching a soccer game at the cash, which was midway between the kitchen and the dining room. Most of them had the standard white apron of service staff. But there were a couple others, possibly members of the family that ran the restaurant, who were more active and more interestingly dressed. The guy who appeared to be the head waiter (one of the first Sicilians I've seen who had a full beard, though very closely cropped) had a beautiful suit jacket, with two-tone patterning (matte for the main fabric, but with shiny patches forming a subtle pattern), and nice slacks, but was wearing a t-shirt with a drawing on it (couldn't make out the design) and sneakers. Another waiter came to offer us dessert, and when I asked for a menu, he proudly proclaimed "I am the menu", and proceeded to list the options. I had a nice tartuffo, and Shoshanna had a tasty panecotta, which despite the name, seems to have no bread products in it.
Nice walk home afterwards to a comfortable and quiet bedroom, and a good night's sleep.