Day 372: Northwards to Palermo

Time to leave Agrigento! We'd really enjoyed the temples and had a good day, but it wasn't the best apartment and neither of us were sad to be leaving. Too cold, and crappy wifi means that we just can't relax and can't be productive!

Set out around 10am, driving in circles around the roadworks looking for first a pet store to refill dog food and then a petrol station with reasonable prices. A lot of petrol stations here advertise their base price, but then tack on 30c per litre for someone to do the filling for you. A lot of times it's not clear which pumps are which, or whether you can even fill up yourself at a particular station!

First stop of the day was at the "Turkish Cliffs", a series of white sandstone cliffs with interesting angles about 20 minutes drive westwards along the coast from Agrigento. It was kind of an odd tourist attraction, very ad hoc. No "official" parking, but lots of people who'd turned their vacant land into an overpriced parking lot. But it was winter, nobody was around, and literally everything was closed.

You couldn't really see much either from the top of the cliffs, and neither of us felt inclined to walk 30-40 minutes down to the bottom for a better look. So we got back in the car slightly disappointed, and left.

We spent the next couple of hours driving northwards across Sicily, through a variety of different landscapes. Craggy mountains, rolling fields, small towns, and a few plains as well. Lots of farming country, all very visually appealing, particularly with towns perched up on hilltops and castles dotting the landscape.

Drove past the town of Corleone, made famous by both the Godfather book and movies, and by real genuine Mafia bosses who hailed from the town. But it was about 30 minutes out of our way and we'd read there wasn't much there aside from Godfather tourist tat, so decided to skip.

Lunch was supremely exciting - McDonalds!

Mid afternoon we arrived in Palermo, largest city in Sicily. It certainly felt like it! Unfortunately I had to drive through a whole lot of traffic to get to our apartment, easily the worst I've driven in. Not heavy, just hectic with people swerving everywhere, scooters going way too fast, no lane markings etc. It really felt like Thailand or something.

Found our apartment and checked in OK. It's a large studio on the ground floor next to a busy intersection; thankfully well insulated so not much traffic noise, but it's also near a hospital so there's a fairly constant noise of ambulances. Newly renovated though, so that's nice. But on the minus side, the "100mbit connection" in the listing was way off - speed test claimed about 15mbit, and it dropped out every 20 minutes anyway. So we'd gone from slow but consistent to slightly less slow but completely inconsistent - not sure which is worse!

Decided to stay in for the rest of the day, so Shandos went to the supermarket for supplies and that's what we did!Read more