Sicily trip recap
My husband and I just returned from nine nights in Sicily from April 20-29. Four nights in Palermo and five in Ortigia. We absolutely loved Sicily, the food, weather, sites and scenery were beautiful and wonderful.
Palermo was a beautiful and lovely city. We stayed in an amazing AirBnB just off main street Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. And despite some posts by travellers describing dirty streets, I didn’t agree. We live in a large Canadian city and have travelled to other European cities and didn’t think Palermo was dirty. I really believe those who think it’s dirty come from middle America and suburbs. And we never felt unsafe we walked from train station after 10pm and it was fine.
Palermo has beautiful architecture, vibrant culture and wonderful restaurants. We took two hour train ride for sunset guided tour of Valley of the Temples, it was spectacular and highly recommend this. The temples were built in 5th century BC and are over 2500 years old!
We visited Santuario di Santa Rosalia and the bus ride has lots of winding roads and with beautiful views of Palermo. We were so lucky it wasn’t busy so we got seats but it would be quite tricky if you had to stand for the whole ride. The Santuario is built into the mountain and quite stunning and beautiful views of Palermo. We got off the bus viewed the church then waited for the next bus. There is a nature reserve where you can take a walk but we didn’t do that.
We used The Fork to book reservations and the reviews are accurate and only book restaurants with 9.0+ reviews and they were all great and didn’t have a bad meal.
Ortigia was amazing, it’s a small village beside Siracusa. Laid back atmosphere with beautiful quaint small cobblestones streets with lovely architecture. The restaurants are even better than Palermo and try Sicilian dishes like caponata, pasta all Norma, cannoli and of course granita! We absolutely loved the granita and try almond, pistachio, lemon, mulberry. So refreshing!
We visited Mt Etna, took the one hour train ride to Catania then our tour picked us up and dropped us off at train station. Due to 8:30 am pick up we had to take 5:30 am train, next time I would stay in Catania rather than getting up sooo early. The guided tour was amazing and we were so lucky to get to 2800 ft elevation as lots of times due to wind and fog they can’t take you up that high. Spectacular views and experience, we got to ride in a Snow Cat machine, very, very bumpy, use the seatbelt!! But the views were breathtaking and worth the ride.
The Neapolis Archaeological park was interesting and worth visiting.
Noto is absolutely stunning and has a billion gorgeous churches. The streets and architecture are incredible and lovely and definitely worth visiting and a short train ride from Siracusa.
We were so lucky we had wonderful weather, sunshine and no rain and temperatures were around 22C/70F.
We loved Sicily and would love to return and explore other areas.