We left home at 10am and by 7pm uk time we were sitting in a very nice seafood restaurant in Castellammare de Golfo but being philistines we were eating meat. The only issue on route was a nasty Easyjet check in operative who tried to make everyone put all their bags in the hold. This instruction was ignored, and as the flight was not full there was plenty of space for everyone.
Our hotel is a great find, it is next to a small harbour, pictured above, with a number of nice restaurants and no through traffic, we are here for five nights so can eat in a different place very night.
We knew very little about Sicily so on the flight out I read the first half of a book on the islands history. Today I was fully armed with interesting facts to bore Gill provided we kept our site seeing to pre Spanish Inquision. So we did an Arab fort this morning and a Greek / Roman site this afternoon and very good they were to.
Sicily was effectively Greek from about 500 BC, the people spoke Greek, followed Greek traditions / beliefs but we're not ruled from Greece. All that changed in 212 BC when the Romans arrived and it became a colony of Rome but the people carried on speaking Greek. The other threat came from Carthage and they held parts of the island at various periods and where we are staying was an Arab port. The temple in the picture above was never finished, a war against the Carthaginians stopped the work and it never restarted.
There is also a very well preserved amphitheatre whose acoustics are excellent.