Agrigento II: A Museum with Lots of Pottery

They had a 20-foot tall, slimmed down Michelin Man in the local archaeological museum

I remember Google maps telling me that the archaeological museum was only 800m from the exit of the Valley of the Temples. That is only a half a mile. That seemed walkable. Except Google maps forgot to tell me that the walk was straight up a mountainside. And that the rain would really start coming down.

The museum is the Museo Archeologico Regionale Pietro Griffo.

It had a lot of pottery. Rows and rows of pottery. Cases and cases of the stuff. Which makes sense, when you think about it. Organic material, such as cloth, rots away. Pottery survives.

And the museum also had a conehead.

Actually, it is a statue of warrior with a helmet. But, to me, he looked like Beldar The Conehead. Who knew the ancient Greeks of Sicily were such fans of Golden Era Saturday Night Live. (But only after Chevy Chase left) (no one really thinks Chevy Chase is the least but funny).

These lions were drainage gutters on the temples.

Seriously, the temples had gutters carved into them and these lion heads were the drainage spouts. They looked like fountains in the frequent Sicilian rains. (Actually, it's not supposed to rain in Sicily this time of year. That's why I packed for dry weather and temperatures about 20 degrees warmer.)

The museum has lots of small objects from the Valley of the Temples, which would be way too small to maintain down there.

The horse has a wine cup on his back.

Why does he have a satyr underneath? That's something between the horse and the satyr, that's all I'm saying.

This one looks weirdly modern.

I call his piece "Walk Like an Egyptian."

And there were the more traditional type of Greek statuary:

And sarcophagi. 

My first thought when seeing that this labelled a sarcophagus was, "What? They buried their dead in bathtubs?" No disrespect (well, only a little), but that's what it looked like to me.

Abrupt transition because you are going to get no wisecracks from me on this piece. This is a child's sarcophagus. You can tell by the small size and death scene depicted on the side.

On the side is the child being carried away to the underworld in a chariot drawn by a sheep.

Not the standard draft animal you see depicted, but children don't need a big ol' horse or ox, I guess.

This is a much larger sarcophagus:

And this is from a psychedelic sarcophagus.

They died from a bad trip, man. (The embedded link is the song that started playing in my head when I saw that this was a sarcophagus.)

Anyway, I continued to walk straight uphill into the town after my museum visit. I had a little time to look around before catching my train back to Palermo.

And to eat local pastries from a place recommended by (wait for it) Rick Steves. 

The Infurna. The one on the right had the texture of a ladylock, but the filling was more pudding-like. The one on the left was made with pistachio cream.

I could have eaten a whole box -- multiple boxes -- of the pistachio cream cookie one.

And it's time to take the train back to Palermo for my last supper in Sicily.

All the walking around made me in the mood for a pizza. And if you order pizza, you drink beer. I have never had an Italian beer before. I don't believe they import them into the USA. I tried a "Messina," which, judging from the name, was not brewed by a former singing partner of Kenny Loggins, but was from Sicily.

Italians love a touch of bitterness and Messina did have a touch of the bitter, but not in a hoppy way such as an IPA. They threw in the onion bread appetizer gratis.

And for pizza?

The Bomba. Spicy salami, sausage, yellow bell pepper, onion and basil leaves.

I still do not know how Italians eat their pizza. They do not cut pizza into slices. They just serve the whole pie uncut. You slice off segments to eat, but you have to use a knife that is duller than an airplane knife and which cannot cur the salami, the cheese, or even the basil leaves. And when you try to pull off the part you've cut off, all the toppings slide off the dough. Still, despite the eating difficulties: Delicious.

The dessert was what the restaurant called cassetella. It was awesome. Imagine an open-faced cannolo. With the perfect amount of cinnamon.

The restaurant was Quid gusto siciliano. Best restaurant at which I ate in Palermo.

And that concludes the Sicilian part of my trip. I definitely would come back to Sicily, to see more of the island. I know everybody loves to go to Italy, but no one it seems goes to Sicily. For shame! Now it's back to Rome for one more day of tourism.