Sunday was moving day again. We checked out at about 10:00 and started walking through some of Cefalù’s narrower side streets and archways with our big bags.
We stopped at a bakery and bought a crispy baguette-type loaf, then walked back to the Duomo and sat on the steps. The bread and our leftover salami became breakfast. We also took turns going inside the cathedral while the other person stayed outside with the luggage.
After that we slowly continued towards the train station. We stopped at a bench along the way and took turns using a public toilet before finishing the walk.
Our planned train was at 12:44, but when we reached the station an earlier train towards Palermo was already waiting. Hugo showed someone our QR-code tickets and asked whether we could use it. Apparently we could, so we got on.
We changed at Termini Imerese. Taking the earlier train simply gave us a longer wait for exactly the same connection, but at least there was a waiting room where we could sit for almost an hour.
The next train initially travelled back in the direction we had just come from before turning inland across Sicily towards Roccapalumba. Construction work on the railway between Roccapalumba and Agrigento meant another change, this time to a replacement bus.
The bus was already waiting when the train arrived. Despite the train, long wait, second train and replacement bus, we reached Agrigento at roughly the expected time.
Our apartment was only about one kilometre from the station, but the route included steep streets and a large staircase. We later counted 131 steps between Via Atenea and the area near the Duomo, all of which had to be climbed with our luggage.
The walk also gave us our first impression of Agrigento. Via Atenea was almost empty, parts of the area looked dirty and a little dodgy, and the staircase was full of stray cats and smelled strongly of cat urine and faeces.
We began wondering why Agrigento had been recommended as somewhere to visit.
We reached the apartment shortly before 17:00, dropped the bags and rested for a while.
By then we were hungry. Since we had already walked through Via Atenea and everything had looked closed, we first tried a place near the Duomo that was supposed to sell pizza.
It was closed.
Rather than immediately walking all the way back down the stairs, we continued along a road at roughly the same level and found a pasticceria Hugo had seen on the map. It was open, and the display contained one remaining slice of pizza from earlier in the day.
We bought it for about €2.50. It was not reheated, but at that point it was immediate food rather than something to be disappointed about.
We then saw that there was a Conad supermarket back near the station side of town. Instead of returning through Via Atenea, we followed the road around the back of the city.
We had only intended to go out for pizza, so neither of us had brought a backpack or shopping bag. This did not stop us buying a fairly substantial selection of cheeses, salami, olives, biscuits, dry bread and cracker-type things similar to those we had eaten in Castellammare del Golfo, and other supplies for the next day.
We carried everything back through Via Atenea.
By then it was later in the evening and the street had changed completely. Via Atenea is Agrigento’s main shopping and restaurant street, known locally as the city’s “living room”. The places that had looked closed and abandoned earlier began opening at around 19:00, and there were suddenly other tourists walking around as well.
We stopped at another open pasticceria and sat down for a ham-and-cheese arancina and a tiramisu. It was our first tiramisu of the trip.
The Conad food came back to the apartment with us for the next day. That evening we did try a pomegranate Messina beer.
Then a woman nearby began screaming.
She continued loudly enough and for long enough that, after about an hour, we were preparing to contact the apartment owner. Before we could do so, he messaged us independently to ask whether everything was okay.
We told him that the room itself was perfect, but that a neighbour had been screaming continuously.
He said not to worry. She was not dangerous; she “just had a problem”.
The screaming eventually died down and stopped.
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