Today was sadly the last day of our Sicily trip. We’ve been driving all over the island seeing the top sites, but today Wendy planned for us to stick closer to home. You might think this would mean that our itinerary would be less exciting, but in fact the things we saw today were some of our very favorite on the trip.

Right down the street from Chris and Wendy’s place is the main landmark of Mussomeli — Castello Manfredonico o di Mussomeli. We’ve been seeing this castle all week — it is impossible to miss as it juts high above the surrounding landscape, built on top of a huge outcropping of rock. (It’s kind of hard to see exactly where the rock ends and the castle begins.) But once we were able to go inside, it far exceeded our expectations.

The path wound up the rock, producing views that grew more breathtaking with each step. And substantial sections of the castle were still intact and available for exploration. We climbed spiral staircases to view the upper rooms, and descended into subterranean passages. Between the castle itself and the views stretching across the dramatic hills of Sicily in all directions, we all agreed this was one of the best places we’d visited.

Next up we drove a bit further away to visit Valley of the Temples, site of some of the most impressive ruins in Italy. One thing I’d never realized is that much of Sicily was controlled by ancient Greece. Archimedes was even born here! So what we saw both here and in Siracusa was layers of history building on top of each other. The ancient Greeks would build a temple, which would later be repurposed by the Romans, and then later by early Christians. So when viewing these sites, you’re seeing an amalgamation of different cultures. (One of the most interesting examples was in Siracusa, where there was a cathedral that was built onto a Greek temple to Athena and still contained very obvious Greek pillars running along both sides.)

This was no exception. The temples are situated along a long promenade with an ancient city wall running along one side and olive tree orchards growing along the other, and beautiful views of the surrounding landscape and the sea beyond. The temples are Greek, but Romans and early Christians left their mark here as well. The city walls were repurposed as a necropolis, and you could clearly see the resting places carved out of the rock and old staircases leading down into catacombs.

This was where we encountered the worst weather we had on the entire trip, by which I mean we felt about five raindrops fall on us when heading back to the car. We have been incredibly lucky here with abundant sunshine and 70-ish temperatures every day.

We thought we were done, but the Brookses pulled one last destination out of their sleeves — the nearby Scala dei Turchi (Turkish steps). These are not actual steps, as it turns out, but limestone cliffs at the edge of the sea. We skipped the long walk down to the beach at the bottom, but the view of the bright white layers of cliff descending into the blue-green Mediterranean was a sight not to be missed.

All that remained of the day was a celebratory dinner. We made the most of it like true Italians, with antipasti, main courses, desserts, and plenty of wine. By the time we got back, it was pretty late (largely because it’s just not done to have dinner before 8pm or so here). Tomorrow we’ll be rising at 5am for a trip to the airport, but we wouldn’t have missed a minute.