East Sicily Tour with Sempre Italiano

We have just returned from our fabulous tours of East Sicily and just in the nick of time it seems. Poor Italy is being inundated with monsoon like rainstorms causing devastation and loss of life around the country as well as other areas of Europe. We pray that our friends and associates in Italy stay safe and can recover quickly any losses they may have experienced due to this crisis. Our back to back Sicily tours however saw great weather and warm temperatures. We started off the tour with a delicious lunch in Giardini Naxos and a cruise around Taormina Bay and a swim in the Ionian Sea. We spent 4 days exploring the areas around Taormina, learned to make pizza, visited Mount Etna and tasted some Etna wine and visited the towns where some of the scenes from the movie, “ The Godfather” were shot. Next, we transferred down to the area of Noto on the South East corner of the island for the next 4 days to visit the World Heritage Site Baroque cities in the Noto Valley. On the way to our accommodations stopping in the beautiful city of Siracusa and exploring the archeological park there then lunch in Ortigia after which we had a demonstration of how ancient papyrus paper was made. We visited the cities of Ragusa Ibla, where we had lunch in an ancient water mill and learned the Tarantella dance. We visited the Baroque cities of Noto and Scicli and tasted Nero d’avola wine in the village of Avola. Marcia and I would like to thank our tour participants, Oscar and Ann, Patti and Elizabeth, Mary Pat and Marcia, Mary and Lorraine, Francine, Steve and Tom, Tim, Ed and Kathie, Mark and Patti, Paul and Barbara, Ralph and Thorey, Elizabeth and Richard, and Patti and Debbie for making the tours so much fun. We also want to thank our partners in crime Laura and Raff Chiusano for being so easy to work with and always a pleasure to have on our tours. Also we want to thank all the folks in Sicily who help us in the hotels and on the road without whom these trips would not be possible.