rex

Caltabellotta is a little town of about 4000 people in the stunningly rugged upcountry above Sciacca on the southern coast of Sicily.

It has a surprisingly good website for the size town it is, with some great pictures.

And it appears that we have found a perfect B&B - - we can take the whole thing, which I really like; almost like having a villa to ourselves (with a cook) even though we are only there two nights.

I think it is the last piece of our lodging puzzle to fall into place.

So, for those of you who have been following my planning - - see http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...p;tid=35105386 or http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...p;tid=35097055 for example - - this is our final itinerary, minus plans for how we will spend our days.

Day 0 - fly to London
Day 1 - overnight at OakLodge about two miles from Stansted; possibly day visit Cambridge
Day 2 - fly Stansted to Palermo on Ryanair (6:10 am departure! -- but we get to Sicily at 10 am); drive (about 159 km to Capo d'Orlando) for three night stay
Day 5 - drive back to Palermo; staying in the center of the city for three nights; a 4 BR/4ba apartment (with cook)
Day 8 - drive (about 130 km) to Caltabellotta, stopping for half afternoon visit in Sciacca; staying two nights in the aforementioned B&B
Day 10 - drive to Scopello (about 80 km) for final two nights.
Day 12 - early morning drive to Palermo airport (about 45 km) for flight PMO-LHR, connecting onward back to the US.

There are some little variations: daughter #2 is going two days earlier than the rest to London to stay with a friend, and our son-in-law's parents are leaving two (and a half) days earlier (taking the day flight) for one night in London, then fly to Catania for two nights' stay on the seaside slopes of Etna, before they meet up with us in Capo d'Orlando. They also leave two days before us, only seeing Scopello briefly before their return flight Pslermo-Rome, then flying onward to Helsinki! (for an "overnight", arriving in Finland at 2:40 am, just about sunrise!) before their afternoon transatlantic flight back to the US.

One final note: for any of you who did look at my "Eight success stories..." post, there is a footnote - - AAdvantage voided the HEL-BOS nonstop on Finnair as not having eligible FF seats for AAdvantage members - - but they did provide seats on Finnair HEL-JFK with AA connecting back to BOS. Semi-bummer; hoping that they might reinstate their seatso on the HEL-BOS betwen now and the dates of our travel (in June). Not all that likely, I suspect.

Best wishes,

Rex

bobthenavigator

Rex, The road up to Caltabellota takes some time. Are you sure you want to be that isolated? Selinunte was the highlight of that western coast for me. I would not miss it.

rex

Bob...

Both google maps and viamichelin.com give this same info: 22 km in 29 minutes.

That's 44 kph (about 30 moh) and seems consistent with how we drive, for those kind of roads.

Caltabellotta has five restaurants shown on its rather remarkable litle website, and the premises provide meals (by request) or an outside pizza oven. They gush over the breakfasts they offer (included).

I do think that we are going to miss the town of Sciacca for all practical purposes (unless we forego Selinunte on the inbound day).

But the place - - and the town, especially at night - - look pretty equally fascinating as "another coastal town" (sorry, Sciacca!)

And I suspect that at least some of us (kids? all of us?) are going to be very tempted to climb that "big ol' rock"! Have you looked at the pictures?

I should have included this URL in my original posting: http://www.caltabellotta.net - - click on the Flickr slide show

Have you driven this road up to Caltabellotta?

bobthenavigator

We had lunch in Sciacca and started up that road but decided to turn around and head for the coast. The village does seem nice---go for it--but do not miss Selinunte. I will attach my photo gallery to empahasize the point.

bobthenavigator

Here is the gallery:
http://www.slowphotos.com/photo/show...y.php?cat=3828

rex

I getcha

aprillilacs

Ha! Caltabellota! We made a pilgrimage to the town last year while on a 10-day trip to Sicily, because our soon-to-be daughter-in-law's grandfather emigrated from there to the U.S. (But we were advised not to ask about the family, since apparently there was some darkness there...). Anyway, we thought it was great. The drive from the valley did not take that long, the traffic was light, and the views as we rose onto the mountainside were spectacular. The town itself seemed very quiet, though we would have been happy as a clam to stay there awhile. The prospect from the town was just gorgeous, the town itself was neat and clean and fun to walk around. (We even found two post cards, which we posted to our daughter-in-law's parents.) I don't think you would regret spending some time there--it's definitely off the tourist track, but very very Sicily. Go for it!

rex

Thank you very much!

Ian

Rex

What B&B are you looking at? Just email if you don't want to go public. I really like your idea & I was thinking about a 3 night stop somewhere around there. Advance planning for 2009 . . .

Thanks

Ian

rex

Since we are not confirmed there yet, I will e-mail privately.

We are having some surprising e-mail difficulties with the agent who is working with us. She says that she gets a lot of bouncebacks from Americans with whom she tries to correspond. Odd.