This definitely wasn't a vacation of laying on the beach or by the pool - but when you are in Italy, who wants to just do that? This was such an amazing experience and every day was filled with great excursions and adventures. Day one was spent in Agrigento, about an hour west of our hotel.
First up was The Valley of Temples. Jason should really be the one to commentate this, as he was in seventh heaven here, being an anthropology major (who's first love is archeology). Instead, you will find lots of pictures and only a few comments here and there. If you want details, I know Jason would love to talk with you about it.
Valley of the Temples is one of Sicily's most famous historical attractions. It's an archaeological park that consists of eight temples built between about 510 BC and 430 BC, including the Temple of Hera, the Temple of Concorida, the Temple of Heracles, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Temple of Castor and Pollux, the Temple of Hephaestos, the Temple of Demeter, and the Temple of Asclepius (the God of Medicine).
A view of the Mediterranean in the background.
We had such a fantastic tour guide who gave us so much information. He lives in Agrigento and really wanted to make his city shine!
Happy boy!!
One of Jason's sales guys, Jeff and his wife Kelly.
Such a beautiful view and the path was lined with olive and fig trees with rosemary everywhere. It smelled so fresh and clean there.
Jason took some photo's of the plaques so you can read.
We had such beautiful weather the whole time we were there. Apparently the week before they had so much rain, parts of the area were flooding.
This is our group for the tour - another half went with another guide, including a couple that live about 5 miles from us. Small world indeed!!
It was so amazing to see such history.
After the Temples, we drove into Agrigento. Such a beautiful city and it was amazing to walk down these picturesque streets on our way to visit an old theater before lunch.
I loved these steps up.
The culture is very slow and relaxed. Lunches take 2-3 hours and the whole town stops and closes down for lunch with family and friends. As we walked down the street, almost every single store was closed. It's very different from the states, but we certainly enjoyed that way of life while on vacation.
Inside the theater with our tour guide who was, hand's down, THE BEST I've ever had.
After this we had lunch in a Michelin rated restaurant. The food was amazing and it has been so hard to come back to the States with how we eat here. I'm trying to replicate the clean, healthy cooking but I have a long way to go.
After this full day we returned to the hotel and had some downtime before getting ready for the Fluke Networks dinner. As I mentioned, there are four different parts of the company and this night each department had their own company dinner. I have no photos from the evening as we didn't take our camera. Dinner lasted about 3 hours but we were lucky, another department had a 4+ hour dinner and somewhere around 8 courses!! We got off easy with about 5 or 6 courses. But the food was truly amazing and so healthy that I didn't even gain any weight on this trip.
Again, we returned to the hotel to find more gifts and it was so nice to be so spoiled. I don't mention this to brag but to just share the excitement. It's so hard on a family to have a husband that travels 75% of the time, so it was so nice to have this trip together and to see some of the fruits of our labor!!
But there's still more to come...
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