Festival of Santa Lucia and Agrigento

Most of the month of December is celebrated as the Festival of Patron Saint Lucia in our town. Each town in Italy has their own Patron Saint and have a festival during the year. The festival goes on for a few weeks, with cannons and fireworks like I said last time. On the day of the Patron Saint, Dec 13th, everyone in the town and surrounding towns gather at the mother church to present the statue and have a procession through the town. We went to church and were then in a crowd of probably 5 or 6 thousand people watching as 30 or 40 people in white robes carried the statue out of the church and placed her onto a carriage ( think Cleopatra) and pulled her along the streets of the town from church to church for 24 hours. It was unreal. The christmas lights through the center of town are pretty awesome too- big arches of colored lights the entire length of the street.There have been street vendors every day with candy, italian christmas sweets which I can't remember the name of but are like fried dough with honey and sugar and crepes. Nativity scenes are a huge deal here, we went to a contest where you voted on the best one that people made by hand.











On Saturday we took one of the base tours to the city of Agrigento, on the southwest side of the island. It is famous for the ancient Greek Temples. They date all the way back to 463 B.C. and most are still in pretty good condition. It was a really cool trip.