Breakfast on the terrace. You cannot tell where the sea meets the sky. I had a jug of Americano coffee, 2 mugs full. The plan today was to look at the ruins. I walked down to the train, bus and taxi station. I could not see anywhere to buy a bus ticket. Pressure was starting to build, from that coffee. I looked for a WC, and remembered that train stations seemed to have them.
I finally found it on one of the train platforms, many steps below the plaza. It wanted 50c. Nooooo! I had left my pouch containing all my change at the hotel. In desperation, I went to the Tabac at ground level and bought a bottle of acqua, €1. I tendered a €2 coin and indicated that I wanted two 50c coins back, something like due cinquanta, and he understood. Down all the steps, and the WC accepted my coin, aaaaaah! Thereafter I was sure to always have 50c and 20c coins on me. About 17 years ago, the same thing happened outside St Thomas Church, in Leipzig. The public toilet wanted a coin. It was Marks back then, not Euros. I was desperate, and had to go into the church and beg change from strangers. If anyone asks you for 50c, give unstintingly.
Then I realised that the Tabac was the place to buy bus tickets too. I went back and watched him sell what looked like €12 day passes for the ruins to three American tourists. My landlady had told me that entry was free today. I bought 2 bus tickets and waited for the bus to arrive. 10am came and went. I looked more closely at the leaflet I had, and saw that the bus left from the other bus station a few hundred metres away. I walked up there, found a #2 bus waiting, climbed aboard and asked the driver if the bus went to the ruins. It did, and I sat down. About a minute later, the bus pulled out. I was the only passenger. The first stop was the railway station. After that, it was only about 3km to the entry point of the ruins. I had thought that the scale of the map was distorted (like the classic London Underground map, which bears little relationship to the actual geography) and the ruins were much further away.
Dinner at a nice restaurant in Agrigento Centro. Seafood soup and spaghetti with pesto. The soup was essentially a plateful of mussel shells. I normally don’t like fiddly food like mussels and crayfish, I prefer food I can eat with a fork, like curry. I split a couple and ate the unfortunate contents. I wasn’t making much headway, and decided to mechanise the process somewhat, and set to, splitting dozens of shells and extracting the contents, placing the empty shells on the plate provided for the purpose. I reckon that’s something the restaurant should do, not me. Finally, I had a bowl of seafood soup, but they had not supplied a spoon. I asked, and a spoon was duly provided. The soup was good.
I had ordered a birra, sessanta sei (66cl). It hadn’t turned up. Eventually, I ordered another, trenta tre this time (33cl). When the bill came, both beers were on it. I made clear that the sessanta sei had not arrived, and they reduced the bill by €4. I left a €4tip.
