Prologue

 

This post is based primarily on Don's notes, occasionally supplemented with MT's notes from our tour of Sicily in September 2023. When information from other sources is added—for further explanation to readers or to satisfy our own curiosity—that is set off in a text box (as this one).
Most of the photos that accompany this post are from Don’s camera (with a caption indicating the time it was taken); those from MT’s iPhone are indicated by “MT” placed at the beginning of the photo caption. Photos from Don and MT’s trip to Sicily in 2005 will have “2005” at the beginning of the caption. Photos from any other source (such as the public domain Wikimedia Commons), occasionally used for clarification, indicate that source in the caption.

 In 2022, Mary-Theresa (MT) and Don Madill remembered that her cousin Lara, who lives in the north of Italy, usually made a short vacation trip to the south of the country in August or September. MT called Lara and suggested that we join her. Later in 2022, Lara called to say that she had found a good deal with an Italian travel agency for a trip to Sicily, which Lara had never visited. She was very interested in doing that with her daughter Chiara. One feature of the deal was that, if we stayed three nights at the same hotel, the third night was free.

MT and Don had visited Sicily back in 2005, as part of a trip from Rome to the southern tip of Italy and then down to Sicily.  In 2005, the places we visited in Sicily were as follows (places where we STAYED are in caps):

MESSINA

Scala

Milazzo

Lipari

San Alfio

Etna

Motta di Sant' Anastasia

SIRACUSA

Ragusa

MARINA DI RAGUSA

Ibla

AGRIGENTO

Sciacca

Selinunte

Segesta

PALERMO

Monreale

Sferracavallo

However, we would not mind seeing Sicily again, revisiting some places we had seen 18 years earlier and including some places we did not get to see in 2005. So we agreed to explore the deal Lara had found. Lara started working with the travel agency for a trip in September 2023.

In early 2023, we got serious about planning the trip, communicating with the agency and Lara by email and WhatsAP. We gave the agency a list of the cities we might visit, and they began proposing some itinerary options. By March, we had agreed on a plan, as follows:

PALERMO (airport and city, 2 nights)

Monreale

Erice

MARSALA (3 nights)

Mozia (Mothia)

Selinunte

Sferracavallo

CEFALÙ (2 nights)

Etna

SIRACUSA (3 nights)

(Ortigia)

CATANIA (airport)

Map of Sicily (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sicily_map.svg ) with Cefalù added.

 

Sicily (Italian: Sicilia) is the largest and most populous island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its capital is Palermo. It is named after the Sicels, an Indo-European tribe who inhabited the eastern part of the island during the Iron Age.
 
The earliest archaeological record on human activity on the island is from around 14,000 BC. By around 750 BC, Sicily had three Phoenician and a dozen Greek colonies. The region thus became one of the centers of Magna Graecia, with the foundation along its coasts of many Greek city-states. The Roman province of Sicilia existed from 241 BC to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. During the Early Middle Ages, Sicily was ruled by the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantine Empire, and the Emirate of Sicily (the latter during the Muslim conquest of Sicily in 827-1091). The Norman conquest of southern Italy in 999-1139 led to the creation of the County of Sicily in 1071, which was succeeded by the Kingdom of Sicily that existed from 1130 to 1816. In 1816, it was unified under the House of Bourbon with the Kingdom of Naples, a union that was known as the Kingdom of Sicily or the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The island officially became part of Italy in 1860 following the Expedition of the Thousand, in which Guiseppe Garibaldi led a corps of 1,000 volunteers from near Genoa and landed in Marsala in Sicily, launching a revolt that conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and led to the unification of Italy.

Don prepared for the trip by checking web sites for all the places of lodging, recording street addresses, phone numbers, and other useful information. He also used (and would take along) resources from our 2005 trip: Eyewitness Travel Guides "Sicily" guide book (2003), Touring Club Italiano "Sicilia" road map (2004); "Friendly Palermo Accogliente [=Welcoming] - Quick Map" from City of Palermo Tourist Office (2005). For places we planned to see for which the guide book did not provide a map, he found maps on the Internet and Printed them out. All these came in useful.