The Fellowship of Nine
Day 6- The Chianti Countryside in Tuscany, Italy

No I havent given up on my travel log yet :)

Breakfast was omelettes for me today!


Outside the canteen was quite a lovely garden that we alfresco-dined at.


Day 6 saw us doing a wine tour with Marco (not the one from Sicily, it's another Marco), the tour guide... and DA-DA-DA-DA-DAAAAA..

Xiuting and Kelvin!

Swee's surprise worked very well! All the Acacians were very stunned when Xiu and Kelvin came onto the same tour coach as us. What happened was Xiu booked the same wine day tour (which was really dirt-cheap at 15euro since it was a special promotional tour by the Florence Tourism Board which Swee chanced upon on TripAdvisor.com) as us, but Swee, Xiu and I specially kept the news a secret from the rest of the Acacians though I was going a little crazy trying to hide this burning secret the whole morning haha.

The tour was super comprehensive and worthwhile as it spanned from 9am-5pm and covered basically whatever we could find in the Tuscanian countryside :) Greenery, horses, museums, small towns, artisans at work and yes, Tuscanian wine :))

Anyway, just a side note, Marco was very fluent in English and I loved the way he pronounced "realise" (which he said very often). Italians seem to be rather gentlemanly, which I think our guys are a far cry from, BUT no, I dont think ang-mohs are for me. Ok, I'm off-track already.

Chianti, which lies between Firenze and Siena, is a beautiful countryside. It's the kind of place that seems so peaceful, that you dont think it would change much with time. Oh, or rather I thought I had travelled back in time, breathing in the fresh air that was there before any industrialisation spoiled it.


Which is also a nice place to ... LOL.



First stop was this museum (Museo di Arte Sacra) that collects old church relics.




Madonna and baby was featured in many of its paintings. Can somebody enlighten me on who Madonna is?


It was also an agricultural museum at the same time, as well as a embroidery museum.


Miniature of cow running a ...?


Second stop was at an artisan's workshop where we learnt about the traditional way of (painting?) on ceramics using 900degrees high heat and somehow the artisan has to colour blindly because the colours only start developing during/after the heating process.




Afterwards, we were brought this enchanting "leeeetle" (little pronounced in the typical Italian fashion) Chianti town called S.Casciano, that bears rich history since the Middle Ages, and yes it played the lead role in a war between Siena and Florence, in which Siena failed to capture Florence city cos the final step was ruined by "The Black Plague" (note to self to wiki this). The Plague that wiped out one-third of the European population that time. The Renaissance era, then came after.

Hence the buildings in this delightful laidback town (insert name) remained in its medieval form and the pictures will show you.


Swee Swee, your house?






I loved it when European history started to unfold bit by bit.. right in front of me. It reminded me of the good old days when i still borrowed children history books to pore over every weekend. :) Very intriguing!

We had a look at a tools museum where I took delight in these cute little irons used by people of the past..


Spotted! A cute little boy who refused to smile in front of the camera.



The following stop was at a wine farm where we took a look at the underground cellars... the process did resemble that of the drug-manufacture process... like hmm... maceration? Sounds familiar?

Barrels and barrels of red wine swirling inside.



Lunch was wine-tasting together with red meat galore - salami, ham beans, tomato salsa and bread. Quite a nice (and free) spread I must say. We ate like Italians - slow and very indulging. We kept asking for more.



Types of wine sampled included Chianti Classico, Rose (lighter and easier on the throat) & dessert wine (which I hated).


Generally I prefer red over white wine but think many others disagree =(. But I was pill-taking and having gastric that day so decided to take less =(. Alot of the Acacians turned tomato-red afterwards and it was really quite a funny sight!



Another round of wine-sampling began after lunch, at another wine company, only that this is located at MACHIAVELLI's (erm an exiled politician that none of us Dodo birds had heard of) house. The thought of being exiled in this great countryside seemed... incredible? Like who would object?



There was even a secret passageway that Miachiavelli dug that led us to the other side of the road. So Xinyi and I were totally joking that we could actually play hide & seek in the gigantic cellar all the way till across the road and of course the most exciting part is "Oh, I found you! *smirks".


(Sidenote: I forgot what this joke was really about cos as I type this, I wonder where was the punch-line?)

Last stop was at a woodcarver's workshop, and boy, I was so very moved (rolls eyes at myself again) by the passion that he has for woodcarving. You could see it in his eyes. Every little intricate detail carved out from an intact bloack of wood and how he could already envision the final masterpiece in his mind even before starting to carve was simply amazing.


There is something miraculous about somebody with abilities that I can never be capable of, and art, it is probably something that cannot be copied. Because what it conveys is from what you are made of, and what you are, makes how special your art will be. :) Alot of people have talent. But I guess not many have such talent AND passion.

With the company of Xiu and Kelvin, we visited San Miniato al Monte via a long bus ride on bus 12 from Firenze (Florence) SMN terminal.

Poor David. Even though he's just another clone of David.

THIS is San Miniato al Monte!

The view from up there was picturesque, although I think we had had enough of climbing that day hahaha.




Dinner was a free one again, at the Archi Rossi hostel, after we were done visiting the baroque church in the outskirts of Florence.

OH I forgot to mention one scary incident the previous night. There were only 2 bathrooms on the floor that our dorm was on. Wing took one, and I took the other down the corridor. Halfway through bathing with shampoo on and everything, THE BATHROOM LIGHTS WENT OUT! Like POOF! DARKNESS ENGULFED ME! Flabbergasted, I dint know what to do (usually when I'm scared I dont usually scream) but to wave my arms lamely outside what I thought was the direction of the shower curtain.
After 10sec of waving in the air, the lights came back on -_-ll. Cold sweat.

Apparently the stupid lights (which was away from the shower space) worked on sensors! ROAR. No wonder nobody used that toilet!

My Five Commandments

1) I shall not be daunted by challenges ahead.

2) I shall be a positive influence to both myself and my peers.

3) I shall treat myself well.

4) I shall step back, take a deep breath, reflect and resume even when all things fail. Nobody shall give up on me, and I myself should not be the first one to think of doing so.

5) I shall always have time for family and friends.

:)

The Fellowship of Nine
Day 5 - Pisa and Florence, Italy

(This post started off in a very agitated manner..)

WE JUST GOT FINED BY THE TRENITALIA TRAIN CONDUCTOR. ROARRRRRR.

Ok I should backtrack abit.

Yes we had a good night's sleep on the rather comfy night train and had breakfast in the cabin as well.


Reached Rome train terminal early in the morning, to grab some breakfast at Conrad, the mini-mart at the basement, before we depart on another train to Pisa to see the leaningggggggg tower of Pisa.



Here's me looking contented with fresh milk and LEMON-MINT Tic-tac purchases, together with my favourite water :)


Then lo and behold, 1 hour later, all of us got FINED 25euro each for not writing that day's date on the ticket in time. We werent exactly thinking of trying to earn another free day cos the tickets had been bought anyway and we wouldnt be able to extend our stay in Europe what with our flight ticket out of Rome being fixed and all that...

But apparently the female conductor didnt quite agree and even though we tried to explain nicely to her that we were not aware that we had to write the date BEFORE her appearance, she wasnt convinced, and hence a big fat fine was slapped onto our faces just like that. Like how innocent la. Just to check that she wasnt pocketing the wads of precious cash into her own pants, she did print out official receipts. And perhaps, on compassionate grounds, she DID cut down the original 50euro each fine to only 25euro in our desperation.

Sighs. In any case, we were all 25euro poorer, which was alot, if you imagined how much we thrifted with regards to food and transport. BOO.

But our spirits were not much dampened... cos there was a little boy from North India who entertained us in the second half of the train journey. Even Xinyi was amused.

But Sweelan had to keep wiping the talkative boy's spit from her face LOL.


We reached Pisa!




And our new City ICs were Swee and Tracy!


Erm none of us did much research on Pisa cos we sort of assumed that since Pisa is really tiny, we should see throngs of tourists just heading over to the Leaning Tower but we reached, alas, there was no signage and it wasnt really within 20minutes of walk! Somemore we only had 2hours to spare before we had to leap onto the train to Florence at 5pm.

Lunch cum teatime was just blood oranges (Sicily's specialty), that had red juice oozing out. Otherwise, they tasted almost the same as grapefruits. But the acid just added to the hunger huh.

The blue Puma ambassador, complete with the genki-sushi alike frown.



The day was beautiful. Let's see how cute the little leaning tower is. It IS cute, isnt it?




AS EXPECTED, ALL (I really mean all) the tourists present were taking silly pushing photos with the tower.


So we followed suit, and we racked our brains for more originality.





Somehow the souvenir stalls managed to draw Swee and Tracy the shopping queens running to them within like 10minutes... Hey, where got tour guides abandon tourmates one?


Somebody bought Coke AGAIN. Guess who? I got myself Mac's Spinach Cheese Corochettes :)


Forward time, and poof! We reached Florence (Firenze), only an hour's ride away at around 6.30pm.


To complain just a little bit, Trenitalia did not fail to disappoint again with its delayed trains and frequent changing of platforms, till we overhead a pair of German tourists exclaiming, "the trains in Germany arent like this!"

The youth hostel that we were staying at has free dinner every night. Our first proper meal of the day and we ate like bears, though the pasta was kinda salty haha.


Florence felt alot different from Rome. Florence had many many small alleyways that were filled to the brim with touristy-alfresco dining restaurants. Yet, walking through the small streets made you feel that Florence was welcoming you back to its arms. So light. So laidback. I think I had just got the taste of love at first sight.

Navigation was rather easy, as you just needed to figure out which direction was towards the river, and which was away from it.





We headed towards to the other bank of the river to catch a student-priced charity performance. By St Mark's Opera Company. Only $5! Quite a bargain. Good job Swee!


The mini concert was held in a small church. The first sight that greeted me was that of the grand piano standing just in front of me.

One day I'd get a baby grand for my room. One day.

Performances were alternated between the male pianist and the female opera singer... SOMEHOW he chose to play quite a few of Brother's (and mine too, since I grew up listening to them) favourite piano pieces by Chopin, Schubert, Liszt, etc. Old memories really started creeping up, and for a moment I felt quite touched by what was happening... UNTIL it struck on me that the pianist was screwing up Schubert's running notes which turned out to be messy, rushed and uneven. Quite disappointing, if not I would have bought the CD for Brother! And he totally ignored Chopin's style, and adopted his own, though he played Liszt's quite beautifully. But when can I pick piano up properly again? Without good practice, I just refuse to play in front of anyone, because my playing is such an embarrassment.

Now to the girl opera soprano. She had a good voice though Wing said that her "tone-changing" was strange. But I shouldnt criticise at all cos I dont know opera at all, not even a tiny bit? She sang famous pieces as well, like Carmen. Somehow I thought that she would be quite a good actor as well cos she was very expressive even when singing (e.g.constant flipping of hair, narrowing of eyes).

In the midst of searching for the famous Grom gelato, we saw how beautiful Florence was at night. Very beautiful. More captivating than at dusk. Romantic even.



Florence after dark felt like a magical whole new world.

We walked into a piazza..


..with a copy of David's sculpture




... and street musicians were playing lively music, and people were wandering around without a real aim in mind, but to soak up the atmostphere. Felt so touched that I could feel tears stinging my eyes. I couldnt quite describe it, but there I stood, feeling more moved that I ever could be (erm wait till I got to Salzburg).


But Florence really does reach out to your emotions in one way or another. And I'm really glad we stayed out late at night to capture this scene, cos we dint really have a chance to in the next two days to come...


Oh I forgot to mention about the Grom Gelato. It was heavenly. Wanqi and I shared a Green Apple and Melon one. Only 2euro. Definitely the best gelato that I had ever tasted in the world.


The blurred pic caused by the fingerprint on my camera lens, which remained there undiscovered in the night.



But poor Alala Lin. She dropped her half-finished gelato onto the pavement!

happy birthday to yuet ting :)

The Fellowship of Nine
Day 4 - Catania & Palermo, Sicily

After yesterday's adventure, we broke up bright and early at 5.45am to go to the fish market at Catania just a street down from the hostel. Throughout this entire grocery shopping trip, we were looking out for ingredients to add to our upcoming homecoooked lunch at the Musio Apartment (the apartment that we were staying at had a kitchen and dining room attached to it.

It was truly an authentic fish market. Fishmongers were everywhere and there were so many types of fish, exotic veggies and meat that we had never seen before.


Eggplants. Yuck. But they are so unusually gigantic so I'll allow them some space here.


These are called...blood oranges. Quite sour leh.





Wingz spotted her target: Can you spot 3 funny faces on these 3 stingrays?


Somebody said that some Italian league footballer was present at the market that day but of course I couldnt recognise who it was. As the market was quite crowded, Swee and Lifang were complaining that some dirty old man touched them?! Really se4 bei bei can.

Catania was quite pleasantly bustling in the daytime and somehow I think I'm still quite a city girl at heart though I do enjoy the countryside too.

Back at the hostel, Xinyi got the pasta sauce going and Honghui helped out with the frying of potatoes.


Tracy made onion/tuna/mushroom omelettes

and Edwin boiled the rest of the potatoes. Me? I was the kitchen assistant hahah, helping to add and wash stuff and take photos =)

Hence the lunch affair was quite a lovely one when everyone got together to eat a homecooked meal overseas like this. Strangely felt like an exchange trip.
Ever since we got to Europe, the Coca-Cola fanatics in Acacia (namely Lifang, Xinyi, Wing and Ed) have been scouting around for the cheapest coke on sale and we found those in Catania at not-too-bad a price. And coke did go well with pasta. So we happily got 1.5litre for 1.60euro for everyone to share. Simple joys in life.


Subsequently we checked out of the hostel to sightsee Piazza del Duomo (many Italian cities have a Duomo each, which is like a famous Cathedral housed in a large square) and this Duomo, St Benedict, is a Baroque cathedral in the heart of the historic Baroque centre of Catania.



There was also an elephant fountain that everyone took pictures with.


Gelato-lovers like Swee (not these two haha) indulged in their 5th gelato ever since the first day we set foot on Italy.

As much as I wanted to, I didnt follow suit that day.

Then it was back to Catania Centrale to take a bus to Palermo. Initially the itinerary planned was going to take us to some catacombs in Palermo, but after Mt Etna, we decided to have a more relaxing day by picnicking at the Botanic Gardens in Palermo instead.

Cute pictures while waiting for the bus.




The bus ride to Palermo was quite scenic. There were uncountable unglam photos of us taken while we were sleeping but I shall NOT upload them.


But 3 hours later when we reached Palermo, the capital of Sicily, we dropped all plans due to time constraints. Palermo is like a typical busy city with lots and lots of people, and even though we hadnt any time to explore it, I wasnt that eager to explore it lol.

In any case, we packed dinner from Mac's at the station and was gravely reminded by the Big Mac Index--- the price of Mac's extra value meals were of the same prices as those in Sg's, only that they were in EUROS. So can you imagine, paying SGD16 for a meal. So of course we skipped the meal and got cheaper stuff instead haha. Skimp and save, skimp and save. No wonder my stomach is no longer expandible nowadays!

Never, never save on drinking water though.


Now is a good time to bring out the map of Italy and Sicily.


Map of Sicily

Our route: Roma-> Messina -> Agrigento (the greek temple symbol on the bottom left of Sicily) -> Catania (East) -> Palermo -> Messina -> Roma.

As you can see, we travelled in a big triangle back to Messina, where we would cross the Straits of Messina to get back to mainland Italy.

I havent talked about the overnight train ride from Palermo to Rome via Messina. As there were no bridges or underground tunnels that crosses the Straits of Messina yet as of May 2009, the ONLY way to get pass is the most traditional way that was the most unthinkable. At Messina, the carriages of our train would be one-by-one disjointed and parked onto a train ferry, WHICH would, over one hour's journey, bring us across the Straits and stop at Villa San Giovanni back on mainland Italy WHERE the train carriages would be reconnected again to run on railway tracks again.

SO technically during the time the train were on the train ferry, we could climb out of the carriages and onto the deck of the train ferry to watch the sea at night! It sounded pretty exciting, but the eerie quietness of the night did deter us from trying to do that haha. But still it felt really really exciting to be on one of the last train ferries across the Straits because, in 2008 the Italian Prime Minister had confirmed plans to finally build a bridge across so these train ferries could possibly run into extinction in the near future!

But anyway, something exasperating happened on the platforms. Trenitalia chose to exercise its unreliability on us that day. We were there ahead of time, peacefully waiting for the correct platform when suddenly, the destination name disappeared from signboard! Checked the time and it was already past the time of departure of the train that we were taking, but the train was nowhere in sight!


So the Sicily City ICs frantically went to all the other platforms to check which platform was the train changed to while the rest of us waited for their news. The moment I saw Wanqi gesturing for us to go over, the kan-cheong spider in me shouted "Run, people, run!" and I started sprinting (ok, whatever, in my fastest speed possible with the backpack) towards Wanqi. That shocked the rest who also started racing to the other end of the station where Wanqi was....

And erm, the new platform which they found to indicate the right train had the destination DISAPPEARED AGAIN by the time we got over. AND I felt stupid shouting for the rest to run cos the train was not there anyway and the whole train station was staring at us crazy running people. LOL. Sorry guys. I always tend to over-react.

Eventually, we found the correct platform. And apparently, they decided to cancel the train that we were bound for, and combined it with a later train at 6.45pm, also leaving for Roma -__-. CANCEL THEN NEVER ANNOUNCE TO PASSENGERS PROPERLY!


With Tracy in the same carriage as us, we yak-yak-yak-ed all the way from Palermo to Messina, where we had to do a transfer to the next overnight train (with beds hurray!). When we reached Messina it was 9.15pm. And our next train was coming at 11.45pm -_-.

Since Messina was more of a commercial port rather than a tourist centre, it was abit deserted and eerie at night. Platforms looked dreary and dark and not the most welcoming sight. Plus the wind was blowing quite abit. With 2 hours to spare, we found our way to the train concourse, which woo, looked alot more decent and.. yes, safe, though hardly anyone was around.

We made ourselves comfortable, sinking onto the floor of the concourse with backpacks and all scattered around us. Before long, this station attendant was approaching us and I was like, die, are we going to be chased away?

He started talking to us in Italian, and through abit of guesswork, we figured that he was going lock up the station washrooms soon and was trying his best to inform us just in case we wanted a trip to the washrooms. And so we took up his kind offer and proceeded to the washrooms (which was a little cheaper than Rome, 50cents euro per entry).

And friendly as some Europeans are, he started guessing that we were from Japan (AGAIN). And he described Wanqi and I as "piccolo" (small) while the others as "grande" (big). Lol. Thus we got to learn abit of Italian along the way.

Anyway, the Messina to Roma sleeper beds were fantastic. The triple-deck bunk beds were firm and came with many amenities like wash basin, towels, chargers, etc. =D.

Cheers to a good night's sleep again!

The Fellowship of Nine
Day 3 - Catania, Sicily

We had brekkie's at the bar downstairs of the bed & breakfast (B&B) hostel that we were staying at. The bar was opened by the B&B's owner's friend.

Given a variety of pastries to choose from, I had some marmalade pastry (Italian croissants has no detectable taste of oil amazingly) and mango juice... on the house! Breakfast comes free with this b & b :) This hostel has successfully spoiled market thanks to Wanqi and a few of us started warning one another to (each City IC had booked his/her respective hostel online) have lower expectations for the rest of the hostels for the rest of the trip haha.

No idea why there were so many mini TVs in the kitchen though.


Bye lovely B&B



Caught a 10plus am bus to Catania, on the east coast of Sicily.


Let's take a look at our Sicily City ICs again!


Journey was a 3-hour long, withe me napping for most of it. We bade goodbye to Agrigento, the seemingly-deserted retirement town for old men, and said hello to Catania, the city that was built from lava rock at the foot of the active volcano, Mt Etna (lifted off Wiki). Mt Etna was the very reason why we travelled all the way down to Sicily, and was also the highlight of Sicily! None of us knew the excitement that was about to greet us that day!


Catania was much more of a city than rural Agrigento, though on a Monday afternoon, most of the shops were closed (for lunch?) and I could only describe the city as a very ancient-looking one. The weather was a little gloomy, and the skies were dotted with flying pigeons.. making it a rather dark setting.



Ok just found this picture very very candid and comical.


Have you ever seen strings of ONIONS hung like this?


Wing led us from bus 457 stop to Globetrotter's B&B, where we found ourselves 2 cosy apartments for 9 of us to share!





I'd love to design my apartment like Swee & co's apartment.

They had a little staircase that led up to the bedroom upstairs.

The owners were nice ladies, who smoked loads anyway, and someone said that Europeans smoke alot probably bcos of the cold?

4pm came by and our day tour guides arrived in their (jeeps?) to take us to an unforgettable Mt Etna experience. Never had I expected such a bumpy 45min (a gazillion times more bumpy than rich's van) ride through nothing but dirt trails and shortcuts through the forests and mountainous areas on the way to the foot of the volcano. So many times we were swung high up off our seats due to the bumping and poor lifang was getting nauseous while honghui kept holding onto my back.

Apparently, the rest in the other jeep-ie-van behind us were screaming and laughing so much that the other tour mates were in turn laughing at them. They all laughed till they cried.

Me taking photos of them behind us.


A guy from Holland sat opposite us in the squeezy backseat of the jeep-ie-van and he was really eager to make conversation. He talked about the very lovely tulips in Holland during springtime and he was there in Sicily for a 2-week language school course. Anyway, it was quite sad to note that Europeans who had heard of Sg knew it as "the fine city". But HH and I tried our best to promote it as "the garden city" instead lol.

The jeep-ie-van.


When we reached the foot of the volcano, we glanced up and I guess none of us expected the climb up the volcano to be such a STEEP one!!! Going up was pretty exhausting as there was again no proper footpath or railing, but only a rough trail made by previous travellers and made up of loose rocks that threatened to make you slip every now and then. At some points, I had to use my palms to go on four limbs to slowly crawl up. Huff and puff. I thought we would never see the top!




But we knew it was all worth the climb once we reached the top another 30 or 45 minutes later. It was not the peak, but it was one of the tops that we could get onto. The guide helpfully added that it can take you days or weeks to really get to the very top.


Threw our jackets aside to listen to Marco the Guide's talk about Sicilian lava.

The only thing that I managed to bring back was that "in geography, anything can possibly happen, but what was important to consider is its geographical time. And that's based on theories by experts, nobody can really predict when is the volcano's next eruption!" We were then quickly assured that Mt Etna was perfectly safe to climb at this moment of time haha. And I learnt that the minimum temp for lava to be molten is 537degrees!

We are on the top of the world!





The climb down was better than expected as I had quite a fear for heights. Yet I kept slipping and slipping on the loose rocks that one of the other tour mates commented, "your shoes are no good!" and yeah he was right. I was ill-prepared in my Adidas trainers since I hadn't bothered to buy a good pair of track shoes ever since JC.


Eventually the assistant guide came to lead me down cos my descent was soooo unstable. I realised that there were two types of people who would be "privileged" enough to get such help: 1) clumsy klutsy people like me;


And 2) pretty damsels in distress aka Lifang who got first-class unique treatment! The same assistant guide had specifically asked for her to take a photo alone with him on the top of Mt Etna for remembrance's sake and had dashed down the volcano to help her with her descent!
(insert missing picture)

Just when we thought that he had run out of gimmicks, he whipped out a bunch of flowers that he had plucked from the wild bushes on the way down and proudly handed them to Lifang. Woo. Reminded me of the Roman Casanovas that were rumoured to loiter on the Spanish Steps of Rome (which we were returning to Rome to visit on the last day of our trip), though Marco jokingly told Lifang not to trust the assistant guide.

Sun was setting by the time we got back to the bottom.


Next up. We visited some recently uncovered cave tunnels that had ceilings so low that we needed to wear helmets to get into the caves and it was as cold as 10degrees inside.


Lava had once flowed through, joining two walls together and resulting in these cave-tunnels.



Night fell. We were treated to a lovely nightview of Catania viewing from up the mountainous areas.


Sicilian-styled pizzas were provided as takeaway dinner and we sipped red wine to keep warm in the strong wind.



The rest went to hide inside the jeep-ie-van away from the cold.


Erm some of the gals werent too fond of red wine and surrendered their cups to Edwin, who eventually drank 4 cups and scared Honghui on the ride home cos he was trying to act like a drunken se4 beibei. Yucks hahaha.

The Fellowship of Nine
Day 2: Agrigento, Sicily

The sunrise we caught on the train.


Forgot where I left off the previous day, but yes we took a regional train that had 6 seats in a cabin WHICH had no locks on its doors...




So we agreed to take turns to sleep so that at least 1 person would be keeping watch on our backpacks and valuables, especially when we had only 1 guy in our 9-person group.

Speaking of that, some friends were quite concerned about us girls going to Europe in such a female-dominated group... what with pickpockets and gypsy children attacking tourists, we were sure going to be easy targets. I had waved some remarks away, though we did make sure we took extra care over our belongings, and YES, none of us lost anything throughout the entire trip, if we dont take into consideration towels and slippers left behind out of sheer carelessness!

Ok back to the very first night train from Rome to Agrigento, Sicily. As Agrigento is considered a small town (in the suburbs?) that is not very touristy, it is also less accessible in the sense that only lao-pok regional trains go there, and only 1 to 2 trains per night.

Naturally we were quite paranoid (or was it only me) about people coming into our cabin while we were sleeping, so I woke up every 1 hour to peer around and indeed, the 3 men who sat a few cabins away were literally randomly patrolling the corridors every now and then to peer and snoop around. When I looked around, everyone had fallen asleep out of great fatigue after the hot day in Rome and 1 sleepless night.

But I couldnt fight the Z-monster as well, and at 3am, I woke up with a jump and one of the men were standing just outside the glass door!! And Honghui, sitting opposite me, was glaring out with her huge eyes. 10 minutes later, she told me that she had woken up to catch 1 man trying to slide our door open and up to NO GOOD. Fortunately for us, her eyes had saved the day. Even though our backpacks were already bicycle-chained to the luggage rack above us, we werent so sure of the money belts that we wore beneath our clothings.

Agrigento had even warmer weather than Rome, since Sicily is at the southern-most tip of Italy. The bulk of the town is painted in khaki and yellow brown and the colours give the town a really laidback, rustic atmosphere.



Sweated like mad after 3 days of no-bathing. So much so that I didnt give a care about where and what I was sitting on already. Yes, we were that dirty.

Apparently Sicilians are not used to seeing such a big pack of Asian backpackers and most of the time I felt like a mobile animal in an open-air safari. Or aliens. We gathered the most number of stares from random old men in suits, who looked like they have decided to spend their days after retirement standing on the streets of Agrigento, waiting to chat up with neighbours. Shop-owners greeted us with loud "Konichiwa" cos everywhere we went, people would mistake ys as Japanese.

I concluded that the Japanese are either very well-travelled, or they must have made a special impression in Italy during WWII. Anyway, we also had others speaking in Thai and Korean to us, but nobody asked if we were from "Cheena".

Because of the stories we had heard about passing motorists snatching away handbags, we were especially on our guard there. We didnt find Italians particularly friendly at this point of time and Sicilians dont speak alot of English. There was this guy who tried to strike up a conversation with us on the streets. Lifang said he was up to no good, as he was trying to slowly build up our backgrounds before catching us offguard. Well, when he was asking us which hotel we were staying at, I pretended not to hear and peered furiously at Sweelan's Italian phrasebook hahaha.

Our hostel apartment was very nice and homely,




And so was its owner! He spoke little English and he kept apologising for his lack of English comprehension. Quite cute. In our 10minute convo, he told me that he works as a journalist, writes about the mafia (!!), president of an animal association, has a wife and daughter, has stayed in Agrigento for 10yrs, has an Italian Dad but an American mum and was born in the U.S.

Afternoon we had brioche (gelato with bread, a Sicilian specialty)... for lunch! Very filling. Limone (lemon) flavour was very refreshing!


A bus trip led by the two Sicily City ICs - Wanqi and Wing.


All the people sitting behind me were acting cool in their shades.



We were travelling to catch our highlight of the day.. Valley of the Temples!




The ruins of the Greek temples were as majestic as I'd thought them to be. Especially liked the one with 4-pillars still standing tall. A quick google search found it to be.. The Temple of Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux).

You can compare then... when the temple was intact and unhurt by time,


to what is left now..








Pushing off the pillars of the Temple of Hercules.




And the final, most well-preserved one. The Temple of Concordia. =)




My dinner was some ricotta cheese pastry which was good but a tad too sweet. Then it was WC's cup noodles + Xy's liang teh. We uno-ed till bedtime. And goodness, finally a bed to sleep on after 2.5 days!


Gossip of the day: Xinyi and Tracy was eyeing the younger man that we guessed to be the daughter's husband. There was some talk about forgetting having a boyfriend at home when overseas........LOL