Sicily October 2023

Traveling through Sicily in a 9 passenger van with 6 travel friends from Texas was so much fun.  We ventured to a few of the expected destinations, but mainly tried for an “off the beaten track” Sicilian adventure.  People ask why Sicily?  The answer- because our travel group has been to Italy a few times, so we wanted to explore a new Italian area. 

View from our rental house deck near Marsala

    We began by flying from the Naples airport to Palermo airport located in the northwest corner of Sicily. We picked up the rental van and drove 1 hour and 45 minutes to Enna. Enna is the very center of Sicily- sometimes called the belly button of Italy. It is also the highest Italian provincial capital at 3,054 ft above sea level.  The belvedere, a new word for me, meaning viewpoint-overlook did not disappoint.

 

Great sunset views from the Enna overlook!

   We were greeted by our hotel host who directed us to private parking. Our hotel P&G Design by Lago Welcome was an art hotel.  We loved it.  The place has 3 rooms- we had all three. One room has a rock wall, another a circular bed with a great view  and the third room has a platform bed with a skylight above.  The lobby and rooms were filled with original art.  The breakfast was amazing.  Everything was locally sourced and organic.  We loved the pistachio yogurt, fresh fruit and the choice of local cheeses, meats and sweets.  It was a great way to start our day.

View from the circular bed room!

 

Ask for the room with the circular bed
so you can pretend to throw pillows
in the air. The pillows are attached
to the wall!!

When in doubt, pinkie out!!

This was just one table (there were 4 tables) with local cheeses
meats, yogurts, fruits and sweet and savory breads

 In Enna we simply walked around.  There were many churches and lots of local people strolling around before dinner.  We chose the restaurant Mezzogrammo.  The pizza was some of the best we had on our whole trip.  We loved the wood fired crust and the wine.  The salads were nice and crisp, great meal for our first few hours in Sicily.

 

mouth water pizza at Mezzogrammo

   The next morning we retrieved our van and headed out towards the town of Randazzo.  I had found the Campore winery online and made a reservation for a tasting.  Hint: don’t follow google maps, it will take you through the back streets of Randazzo, rather than just taking the main road around the town.  The police made us back up because we were going the wrong way down a super narrow street.

 

our 9 passenger van going the wrong
way down this street in Randazzo did not make the 
 local police happy...oops.  Our fabulous
driver (Gwen)  had to back up 50 feet in order to turn 
around!  Great driving skill!

The  Campore winery was located next to a plant nursery- they had not completed the main entrance driveway to the winery yet, so we had to drive across a dirt track to the entrance gates (they will be planting more grapevines at this entrance next year).  As soon as we hit the main gate and drove in, we were overwhelmed with the beauty of the place.  They had gorgeous tasting rooms spread out all over the property.  Many of the rooms were historical, containing the old wine presses. 

 

one of several tasting rooms

a tour of their  new facilities

 

walking around the property

 a view of Mt Etna from so many angles at the  Campore winery

On the property is a small stone chapel perfect for small weddings or a memorial. (I would love to have my 50^th wedding anniversary at this property- it is that special)

 

There was a small passenger train, Circumetnea Railway, which. runs from Riposto to Randazzo.  It is a 1 hour ride through the Etna foothills. You can get off and explore the town of Randazzo , or you can continue on the circular route around Etna to Catania.(there are some changing of trains and schedules change frequently). The reason I mention this train is that the train will actually stop at the Campore Winery if you make a reservation.

 

Now I must tell you all about the tasting.  I booked a tasting for 2 hours that included 3 wines, and a light lunch.  What we got lasted 5 hours.  They showed us the property and the wine silo buildings under construction- all super modern and aesthetically well done. We got unlimited wine, and so much food.  The food ranged from cooked vegetable dishes, bruschetta, cheeses, olives, meats, pumpkin pasta, fresh melon and the most delicious pistachio cream tart for dessert.  It was a $40 euro per person tasting (2023).  I couldn’t help but think about how much per person this would have cost us in Napa, California ($150 or $200 pp??).  Our favorite was their sparkling wine.  We ended up buying a few bottles of each of the three wines to drink that evening.

 

the beautiful room we had our tasting in

   We hugged the chef and the winery owner and drove about 10 miles to our hotel (I didn’t notice that the winery had hotel rooms or we would have stayed there! )

Our hotel that  night was a beautiful property, Etna Quota Mille. I picked this place because it had views of Mt Etna and a restaurant.  We ended up not needing the restaurant because we were still full from our late lunch.

 The property had a gorgeous pool area and well maintained gardens.

 The rooms were quirky, one room even had a marionette puppet stage with puppets above the bed- how cool is that (or maybe creepy-lol).

 

a close up of the puppets

Unfortunately, it rained that evening so we couldn’t enjoy the outdoor areas, so we just played cards in the lobby and drank our winery wine.  Breakfast in the morning was delicious with cooked to order eggs, meats and pastries.

 

terrible hand for spades. Should I go nello?

  Next stop, after a 2 hour drive was the island of Ortigia. I chose 2 apartments at a place called Autentica Ortegia.  The apartments had kitchens and a washer. We were here for 2 nights- so laundry was done that afternoon so it would be dry by the next day. Our host was really nice and let us put our luggage in the apartments early, so we could go out and explore Ortigia. The apartments were nice but were in 2 different buildings. So make sure you ask about this if travelling in a group.

shared living room

WARNING!!!!Parking is an issue on the island of Ortigia.  There was free parking across the street from our apartment, but with such a large van we opted for paid parking.  You pay using an app.  There was a man posing as a parking lot attendant, but with no ID or uniform, we figured he was scamming people, (he was) so we just paid by app. The credit card machine on site was not working.

 

After dumping our luggage, we walked the 20 minutes from our apartment to the Neopolis Archeological Park. I was really expecting another Pompeii, but it wasn’t. It did have the large amphitheater and a few temples and tombs but the parts that interested me the most were the caves that were created as they quarried the rocks used for building structures around this area.

 

That afternoon we explored Ortigia a bit.  We found a great spot for a cocktail with a view!

We continued our walk into the evening and had a nice dinner in an alleyway!

our fabulous waiters

The next day we planned to take a boat ride out to see the coastline, but the high winds and waves cancelled that idea, so we just put on our walking shoes and strolled just about every street and alleyway in Ortigia.

We saw spectacular sights.

and ate some fabulous food

Irma la Dolce amazing breakfast

gelato- chocolate and coconut

 

We visited the Maniace Castle.

Walked past the Temple of Apollo

 We visited the Cathedral (Duomo di Siracusa)

I am a bit obsessed with bone relics...
These are the arm bones of St Lucia.

We saw an opera singer performing outside the cathedral.

 

We went to the market and had the famous sandwiches at Caseificio Boderi food stall

 Our last meal was at Divino Mare.  It was really delicious.  We were so lucky to get seating for 6 people with no reservation. (make reservations for dinner even in October)

I am not sunburned, I have been drinking red wine.

After 2 nights in Ortigia, we headed to Caltagirone for 1 night. Caltagirone is famous for its ceramics and its grand staircase with 142 steps, with each step’s riser being a different ceramic motif. We  stayed at B&B IMori, a great 3 room hotel halfway up the famous staircase.

great view from our hotel balcony

pinecones and Moors' heads are really popular
each of these has a legend to go with it. (google it
too complicated to explain)

only 100 more stairs to go!

We had a nice lunch at Ristorante II Dasa

We took the tour train around town because our waiter was also the train driver. 

Our waiter photobombing us

The tour train took us up and down steep, steep hills, past many churches and to the botanic gardens. It even had an English narration for our train car. We were glad to see the town without the effort.

 

when I say this town is steep, I mean it!

WOOOWOOO all aboard the train behind us

We did a bunch of ceramic shopping. (we bought ceramic pinecones for each other- it is lucky to receive a pinecone from a friend). Many shops had artists at work.

We climbed to the top of the staircase to see the street art. There was tons of it... and it got us to explore some cool back alleys. It was a fun day

 

We ended our day eating a lovely meal at ninebistrot

you needed a reservation to sit in this fancy room
we sat in the bar area- so glad they had room for us.
Again, make reservations, even in October.

lamb pasta alla Norma
(eggplant, pasta , lamb and basil)

Good night from Caltagirone!

The next day we were off to our beach destination of Scala la Turchi.  We were running ahead of schedule so we stopped at a seaside restaurant for lunch.

The shrine is in this picture because we actually backed 
our nine passenger van up TO it (not into it) so the back doors couldn't be opened.
On the last trip to Italy, we ate seaside in Citavecchia, (north of Rome) we had ALL our luggage stolen
on day 3 of an 18 day trip. We now know to back our van up to something as 
protection!!! Mary protected us as we ate calamari and fish in Sicily.

 We stayed at the Mammalaturchi hotel.  Another small hotel (mom and pop ran it) that was beachfront.  It had beach chairs, umbrellas that we could borrow and a nice patio deck for happy hour.

View from our hotel room

 We could walk to a Scala La Turchi (Stairs of the Turks) rock formation from our hotel. You used to be able to climb it until some people decided to spray paint it and carve their names into the soft limestone.

 

We walked to Lounge Beach Scala la Turchi for dinner...it was a beautiful walk home. The food was okay, but the surroundings were really nice- views of the moon on the water.

a little wine leads to fun photos

 

From our hotel we had only a 20-minute drive to Valley of the Temples another incredible archeological site.  We were supposed to have a guided scooter tour, but it was cancelled because rain was predicted, so we just got the audio guides and toured it ourselves.  I found this place to be interesting, and was so glad for the audio guide, but would have preferred a live guide.

 

Returning to our hotel we spent time wandering the beach, swimming (yes in Oct!) and collecting sea glass.

 

really great sea glass collection place

Our final Sicilian town was Marsala.  We had a beautiful house for 2 nights (near Marsala) with a rooftop deck near the salt flats and close to the Trapani airport (we flew from Trapani to Rome on our last day). The name of our place was Martina's Vineyard on booking . com. (Highly recommend)

 

view from the rooftop deck

While at Martina's Vineyard we had a chef  cook us a meal , served on our patio that we really enjoyed.

 

We walked from Martina's Vineyard  to the nearby salt flats, complete with windmills on a picture perfect day.  There are boat tours of the salt flats, but we just wanted to relax today.

Our surprise town was Marsala. I had read about it, and it sounded so-so... but we couldn't get out to the island of Favignana- the winds were too high, so, instead, we drove to Marsala and parked.  We had no expectations as we began our walk. It turns out that Marsala has marvelous pedestrian streets. 

 

We stopped and had a wonderful happy hour at Enoteca Strada del Vino Marsala.  We met the owner who gave us additional wine tastings…so of course we bought a bunch of wine!!

Happy hour table under the arches

a bit of squid ink pasta to soak up the wine

let's try more wine  with the owner instead of just
paying the bill and going home

Wine Sherpa!! Rooftop happy hour tonight.

Last stop in Marsala was Cantine Florio, (established 1915), for a marsala wine tasting- I was surprised at the range in taste of Marsala wines. I thought they would all be sweet, but they weren't!   And the history behind Florio was amazing- it was almost completely destroyed by bombs in WWII.

This was put in the cask the same year WWII started.
Marsala took some direct hits by bombs but this cask
survived.  It is VERY expensive and only sold by the glass now

Our tour of Sicily is over.  We flew out of the Trapani Airport to Rome.

(you can see my other blogs at 1960travelgirl.blogspot.com)

 But for now, goodnight from Sicily!!