Palermo
 

Hi everybody
My husband and I are going to Italy for 3 months as part of our retirement experiences.
The idea is rent an apartment and live as a local - we are already studying italian :-)
We did this last year in France and we ave choosen Lion as our city - not a very busy place but not too small...an it was absolutely perfect. We rented a litlle flat, we did french course, we went to the gym... as any other person in town . It was so good we went back for other 3 months :-)
We have a lot of doubts because we don´t know mch about Italy. Rome, Florence and Milan are out - too big, too touristic.
Some friends have told us that Palermo would be perfect as it is a very "italian" city, very funny and warm.
Can you helm here with some opinions about how will be living threre for 3 months ?? How is public transportation, costs, inmigrant problems, etc??
We will be there during october, november and december. No rented cars :-) we are pedestrians all the time...
Thanks in advance
Katia

If you post that in the ThornTree Forum (lonelyplanet),you will get a answer from Luca, who lives at Palermo since years.

Thanks!

Palermo can be an absolute delight! It is a bit on the "gritty" side, though, and so not everyone is as enamored of it as I was. As another option in Sicily, consider Siracusa (Ortygia, to be specific). Get a couple of good guide books to learn more about each before deciding.

Enjoy!

I enjoyed Palermo, but I'm not sure I would enjoy it for three months. I loved Ortygia.

It is interesting that you are considering Sicily, which is definitely not considered to be "typical" Italian.

At the other end of the country, you might take a look at Turin.

We have spent about ten months in Venice (5 x two months), and really loved it. Sure, Venice sees many tourists, but it is not hard at all to escape them. If you click on my user name, you'd find several trip reports that I wrote while in Venice. Maybe worth a thought.