Hi Everyone!
I am looking for some very specific Sicily advice from some seasoned Italy travelers. My husband and I are going to spend a week of our 15 day honeymoon in Sicily and we are looking for some good tips.

BEFORE YOU RESPOND, let me start by saying we are not the average tourist and "average tourist advice" is NOT what I am looking for. We are tourists that hate to travel with tourists! Sounds hypocritical I understand. But I feel I must preface this properly to weed out any advice that might send me to a tourist trap. We are very adventurous travelers, we despise tourist spots as a whole (hated Taormina, loved Gioiosa) and crave the "authentic" Italian experience.

On that note, we are searching for some good spots on the Eastern coast of Sicily from Catania to Siracusa. We would love to stay in places where little to no English is spoken (and regular tourists would be too intimidated to go).

I would love to hear from anyone who travels somewhat like we do, who loves Sicily and would like to share some special places.

Grazie mille!
Yvie

When you say "loved Gioiosa," do you mean Gioiosa Ionica in Calabria?

hello;
well between catania and siracusa is one of the most touristy areas in sicily i'm afraid to say (i know Taormina is worse !)
if you'ld travel a bit past siracusa, life changes however;
- we stayed ourselves in Ispica in Villa Sara - the owner speaks english but not perfect, and we had a lovely time there. the place is at about a mile from the sea, and is really quiet. however if you go into town itself, hardly anyone will speak another language but italian - the restaurants we went to had italian owners and italian customers and no english...(the owner of villa sara suggested some excellent places and also booked us).
we enjoyed taking trips to the Vendicari national park from there (again no tourists to be seen - well actually there were only 3 italian families when we were visiting, an absolute brilliant coastline, salt water lakes,... and some signposted walks (take enough drinks & food as there is nothing really close where you can get food or drinks). Another lovely spot was the old thuna fishing harbour near the park... very small and very sicialian and again no tourist to be seen during our holiday.
we took day trips to modica & ragusa ...
I left reports of our stay on www.slowtravel.com.
I'm sure you'll enjoy this area.

I don't think you'll find non-touristy places ON the coast, because the coast is the coast, and even if a seaside town doesn't attract foreign tourists, it will most likely attract Italian tourists, at least ones from Sicily (unless it is a purely industrial town). Same is true of beach towns in my home state on the easy coast of the US. However, if you're willing to be NEAR, but not ON, the coast, and just somewhere in northeastern Sicily, I'd suggest staying in some small hotel or agriturismo in the Nebrodi mountains. You can check the brochures or maybe the website of the Nebrodi park, which lists lodging within the confines of the parklands, but there are also nice little Norman hill towns just as appealing that don't happen to be within the park, but are geographically and historically and architecturally similar to the towns in the park. (If you're genuinely interested, I can post my favorite, but you must treat this town very well.) I didn't notice anyone speaking English in those places, by the way. I also love the nontouristy places in Sicily, but I nevertheless appreciate the beauty of extremely touristy Taormina, too, and the views of Etna from the Greco-Roman theater there are among my favorites.

P.S. There are many towns that are named Gioiosa something-or-other.

If you like Baroque architecture and are not put off by poor neighborhoods, you should consider towns like Ragusa and Modica, which have virtually no American tourism. There are several coastal resorts in the provinces of Siracusa and Ragusa which cater to Italian families, but they are nevertheless resort places. Palazzolo Acreide in the province of Siracusa has famous Greek ruins. Much of these two provinces is very, very rustic.

We stayed at this hotel in a suburb of Catania

http://www.paradisoetna.it/

It's a beautiful hotel with very nice rooms. It's a small town where everything closes in the afternoon. The restaurant at the hotel is wonderful and try the local wines from the area. If you are there on a Sunday during the summer they have a party each week where, it seems, all the locals go

Very non touristy town

Thanks for all the advice. I wasn't saying that Taormina didn't have lovely things to see, its just not my cup of tea. I'd gladly bipass an artistic masterpeice or famous historical site for a taste of the real Italy. People who visit the empire state building or times square in NYC aren't necessarily seeing the "real" New York! That's what I am looking for in Italy. I've been there enough times to see great historical sites and plenty of art, now I just want to soak up the real stuff and speak Italian. Thanks for the tips, I will surely check out the travelogs!

PS* By Gioiosa, I meant Gioiosa Marea (sorry forgot the last part), its on the coast and there were no Americans there. I don't necessarily agree that all coastal places are touristy. I traveled through Brolo, Patti, Piraino, Gioiosa Marea and even parts of Capo D'Orlando during early summer and struggled to find even one American in these towns.

So you're not looking for places with ZERO tourism, and you don't mind if the tourists are Italian, or even other European? I think Capo d'Orlando is popular with local tourists, Sicilians away for a short break. I stayed there briefly in May one year. Though I didn't see any other Americans (or at least I couldn't tell since i didn't hear English spoken, but then i didn't speak it there either), there were tour buses of Italians (possibly Sicilians, but I'm not sure). The town did, however, have a normal life of its own apart from tourism. I never got to Patti, but nearby Tindari was LOADED with local day trippers and also seemed to have a fair number of French tourists in the archeological area.

OK, I screwed up on that. Not looking for "zero" tourism in that I enjoy traveling with Italian tourists no problem. But other foreign tourists, especially Americans, I have no interest in being around them on my vacation. Not to sound discriminatory but c'mon, we all know that Americans CAN be obnoxious tourists, not all of them, just most of them- ha ha.

Hi yviebee,

I don't know why you are getting so uptight about seeing so many Amercian tourists in Sicily. We were just there in May and we barely saw any! (And we were all over the western and eastern coasts of Sicily!) If anything, we were encountering many more German tourists and near the volcanoes, we found quite a few French.
I think you should just relax and enjoy yourself -- Sicily has so much to offer no matter where you go and no matter who else is there. Believe me: other tourists can't possibly ruin your experience there.

OH PUH-LEEZ! In regards to Bettyo70?. clearly we are not on the same page. Your advice to ?just relax? is ludicrous to say the least. The correct answer is a resounding YES INDEED; other tourists CAN ruin your vacation ANYWHERE you travel. The fact that you are calling me ?uptight? for wanting a very specific type of travel experience shows me that you have clearly missed the point and are most likely the type of unseasoned, tour-bus loving tourist that I would never take travel advice from in the first place. Perhaps you failed to read the earlier threads when I explained exactly what I was looking for.

Honey,

You need a vacation... and a masseuse... and some sedatives... PRONTO!

Good luck!

bettyo70 has written one of the best trip reports (5/31/04 - Sicily) that I've had the pleasure to read.

Ha! Ha! This was funny! I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Betty, Yviebee-you do sound as if you need to chill out a bit! Btw, I made several trips to the area just outside Catania, (on business) and we stayed at the Catania Sheraton-which is right across from the beach, located on the lovely Cyclops Coast-and is within walking distance to this tiny fishing village with the most romantic little restaurants by the sea-saw no tourists of any sort around there- and I can assure you that the Sheraton Catania is 100 per cent authentic Sicilian-saw very few European tourists there-mostly Sicilians and southern Italians. Check out their website-it's a great hotel, in a great location, but not inexpensive. Catania is 2 km from the hotel.

TuckH: Thank you for your compliment. I am glad that someone enjoyed reading my Sicily trip report as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Cheers!

Bettyo70 is just trying to help by giving advice. Don't see the need to be rude.