Hotel Kore in Agrigento, March 2005

This is the hotel I stayed in while visiting Agrigento, Sicily, in March, 2005. I was looking for the hotel in the dark and had gotten lost while driving through the traffic circles near the Valley of the Temples. I wound up going the wrong way, toward the beach, because I knew it wasn't in the historic part of Agrigento, on the hill. I thought I was in the right neighborhood, by the beach, for the Hotel Kore, because I found another hotel that I had seen on the travel websites, and thought they could be close by. The presence of a beauty salon also called "Kore" (after the goddess Persephone, who had one of the major cults in ancient Greek Sicily) made me convinced I was on the right track. But, I wasn't. :)

After going the wrong way on an un-marked one-way street (it was a small street, dark, and there was no "Senso Unico" sign. I guess they didn't have to mark it...the locals knew!) I tried to ask for directions, saying that I was looking for the Hotel Kore. The man replied, "McDonald's!"

First, I thought he said "McDonald's" because I'm an American, and maybe my accent was coming out strongly when I was speaking Italian? But, it turns out, when I finally went the right way on the traffic circle near the Valley of the Temples (he did give me more directions, but never explained what "McDonald's" meant), I came into a part of town that looked like it was just being built up in the 70s and 80s....and sure enough, there was a McDonald's!

I went into the McDonald's to ask for more directions. This caused a lot of laughter from both the staff working at the fast-food restaurant, and the Sicilian families with their children... it turns out that the Hotel Kore was RIGHT NEXT DOOR to the McDonald's, but they did not have a sign that was lit up, so I had driven right past it to get to the McDonald's parking lot.

Needless to say, this photo was taken the morning after.

It was a lovely hotel, one of the nicest in Europe that I've stayed in. And after that adventure, it was almost sad that I was moving on to Piazza Armerina the next night. :)