My wife and I spent twelve days in Sicily in October. It wasn’t at the top of our bucket list until we looked into it in more detail after our daughter visited and loved it. We are so glad we did. We learned of Sicily’s unique history, visited its ancient temples, ate its delicious food, and espent time with its friendly people. Sicily is an island about the size of Massachusetts located in the middle of the Mediterranean off the southern tip of Italy.
While it’s part of Italy, it’s quite different from the Italy we’re familiar with from past visits to many of its cities and towns, its wonderful wine regions and famous tourist spots. It’s uniqueness is due to its location, positioned close to Africa, Greece, and the Middle East. Over the centuries, it’s been influenced by the Greeks, Arabs, Spaniards, Jews, Moslems, Turks, and Africans that migrated to the island to settle or to fight in one of its many wars. It’s also home to Mount Etna, Europe’s highest active volcano and whose presence has dominated the island for centuries.
We traveled mostly around the periphery of the island counterclockwise, spanning about three-quarters of its circumference, beginning in Catania on the east coast and spending time in Taormina, Siracusa, Modica, Ragusa, Scicli, Agrigento, Menfi, Marsala, and Palermo, at the northwestern part of the island
Sicily seemed like its own country, isolated from the rest of Italy and independent with its huge agriculture business and fishing industry, much of which goes to feed the rest of Italy. The numerous cities and towns, unlike Italy, were closer to sea level and usually not situated behind a fortress atop a hill, as we had seen so often on mainland Italy. Each town has its own personality and often famous for food specialty.
We were introduced to one version of Sicily by the Netflix series, White Lotus, that took place in Taormina, a small town on the east coast, north of Catania. It’s filled with luxury hotels, high end shops, and dramatic cliffs overlooking sandy beaches. But that is not what Sicily really is; that was an anomaly.
We visited beautiful towns, many of them thriving with their traditional food specialties such as pistachios, wine, cheese, sausuges, avocados, chocolates, seafood, etc. Some towns were grittier like Catania and others were beautiful towns on a hillside like Modica.
One of the most amazing areas was Agrigento, a town filled with Greek ruins, many in surprisingly good shape. It had been the third largest Greek city in the fifth century BC and many of the buildings were still standing. The ancient temples are in much better cshape than most anywhere else. The Temple Concordia has a similar design to the Acropolis in Athens, but is much better preserved and much more impressive.
We stayed in three different locations as we circled the island, Catania, Ragusa, and Menfi. One hotel was a former winery, a second was on a working farm, and the third and last was the gorgeous Foresteria Resort that’s located adjacent to a Planeta Wine vineyards.
We traveled with a small tour company we had used many times, Culture Discovery Vacations. My wife discovered them about a decade ago when they came up number one on Google search after entering” Italy, food, wine, cooking.” Our tours have been small, varying from 7 to 16 people, reasonably priced with no add-ons, filled with excellent food, wine and cooking.
As for the wine, much of it was decent red table wine based on the Nero d’Avola grape, and not as refined at wines from elsewhere in Italy such as Montalcino and Barolo. The food is Italian but a variation from the rest of Italy, and most equal or better than anywhere else in Italy. Sicilian specialties include pasta with seafood or eggplant, a unique fried rice ball called arancini, and their own version of gelato called granita. We ate at restaurants and cooked some of ouwn meals, including pasta alla norma, eggplant caponata, Sicilian sausages, Modica chocolate, Sicilian cannoli, arancini, and more, all using fresh, local ingredients. We visited one of Italy’s oldest food market in Palermo that has changed little in centuries.
Having been to Italy more than a hal- dozen times, we thought we knew Italy pretty well. But until we visited Sicily, we didn’t realize what we had missed and were so glad to have visited.
How we got there – Unlike many long trips involving different airlines and stopovers, this trip went perfectly. Flew Lufthansa from San Diego to Munich and connected with an Air Italy (ITA) flight a few hours later to Catania. Returned from Palermo to Rome, spent a couple of days, and then Lufthansa to Munich where we flew nonstop to San Diego. Stayed at the Joe Brancatelli (joesentme.com) recommended Albergo Santa Chiara in Rome, a great choice for convenience and cost.
