Weird. Very weird.... I saw one of those asparagus spears in Zingaro National Park and wondered what it was.

Just Wow! Excellent report! I had just finalized my itinerary for our 3 week trip in September, and your TR popped up. Your photos tell the story of your lovely trip. Thank you.

I assume we have seen those gigantic agave "asparagus" before without realizing it, but after identifying this one, we saw them all over Sicily over our last couple of weeks. Guess you have to be looking for them.

Thank you. September should be a nice time. We spent last September in Umbria, and it was near perfect weather-wise. Sicily, in places, was busier than we expected for May, but there are so many places to get away from the crowds.

The weather forecast was for more unsettled weather, so we went off schedule, and, frankly after my fog drive the day before, my wife was ready for a new driver. No disagreement, this was Mothers Day. We started with a morning gelato with “panna”, and, at the suggestion of our apartment host, we took a scenic train trip to Palermo and back, our only rail excursion for the month. It was two hours, cheap and we had a nice clean train. As we indicated at the beginning, we have been to Palermo before, so our unscheduled trip there was not intended to cover all of the usual tourist places.

Of course, the day turned out, unexpectedly, to be nice with a fair amount of sunshine. The fairly empty train through the mountains offered stunning vistas, until we started seeing trash piled up in places on the outskirts of Palermo. We hadn’t paid a lot of attention, but we also passed many roads and towns that will be part of our driving experience in the coming days. The double rainbow upon the return to Agrigento was a nice end to Mothers Day.



Agrigento, Mothers Day morning

Palermo: Markets, history, street vendors (who will ever buy all those phone covers?), cheap food and drink, some characters, the glamorous and not so glamorous, and crowds for sure. The long pedestrian street (Via Maqueda), with its many bars and informal dining, was like one huge party.



Palermo Rail Station

I can’t believe the crowds in Palermo, wow! We were there for five days starting the Easter weekend and there were mostly locals, except for quite a few French Canadians. Actually, it wasn’t crowded at all throughout our trip, mid to end April. The weather was also lovely, except for rain the Easter weekend. Bright sunny days, though the evenings were chilly and you needed a jacket.

We love the old theatres, found in many, if not most, Italian villages. Teatro Massimo in Palermo is stunning and is the largest in all of Italy (and third largest opera house in Europe). Built in the late 1800’s, the 1381 seat theatre is known for its acoustics. A once private domed room in the building for nobles, known as the Echo room, alone is worth the visit as you can play with acoustics that amazed us.

The Count and Countess Federico still live in Palazzo Conte Federico, amidst the grit and chaos of Palermo. Their home includes a 12th century tower and artworks and history that included visits by many notables. Count Alessandro continues as an Italian racing legend, even in his 80’s. Countess Alwine is an accomplished musician and swimming champion. The history of the family that goes back centuries to King Frederick is told by one of their sons, who routinely provide the tours of this impressive palace. If you visit, you will discover so much including artwork hidden in the walls for hundreds of years. Even though there is personal stuff all over the place, there was not one admonition to anyone from this personable guy.

























Looking at ceiling through a mirror

We had those agave “asparagus” all over our property when lived in Arizona as did our neighbors.
I have enjoyed your report from Sicily so much!

We are on our way to our next base, Castellammare del Golfo.

We don’t normally pursue celebrities or their homes. But we were fascinated with the HGTV series on actress Lorraine Bracco (Dr. Melfi on Sopranos) and her one euro house purchase in Sambuca di Sicilia. HGTV followed her $250,000 renovation.

Recently, Sambuca reported something like $100M in investments from their successful one euro program, presumably counting all the renovation work. Hard to believe since that would mean 400 similar renovations, and this town has only 6,000 people.

We found Sambuca to be tourist-free, except for us, on a quiet Monday morning. We did see a number of "for sale signs", maybe some from one euro buyers who got restoration sticker shock. Or perhaps the realization that Sambuca is a bit remote.

The town had many signs of the Virgin Mary as queen of this town, leading to its beautiful main church, full of Murano glass chandeliers.

Local bars promoted their own unique breakfast sweets with historical anecdotes about their creations. We tried the wedding ones created by nuns in 1725 to look like a "magnificent breast" with nipples, this one with candied squash. Too sweet.

And, perhaps as a thank you for our business, we got directions to the Bracco home. Not a mansion for sure, and it still needs a thing or two; but the interior, based on the TV series, would certainly be our Italian dream.







































Lorraine Bracco HGTV house

It started out as a nice sunny day, but that quickly changed to a mixed bag, with some downpours. But we proceeded with our plan to go to Corleone and Prizzi, both fairly remote. The road(s) from Corleone to Castellammare del Golfo, our next base, were the worst we have experienced in our first three weeks in Sicily (partly due to flooding). Don't be confused: these were all main roads between these towns. Having said that, during some breaks in the clouds, the countryside was stunning.

We still have more than two weeks to go, and only sunshine from now on.

We re-watched the three Godfather films this spring in anticipation of our trip to Sicily. Just as we finished, we watched the Oscars and realized that this also was the 50th anniversary of the first one. We expected that the hype would bring crowds to some Godfather locations, which we will talk about that as the trip progresses.

Corleone, the town and the family name, are central to the story, but the actual town didn’t appeal to the film makers. And, it didn’t appeal to us much. Corleone itself had zero other tourists the day we were there, but there was at least one sleepy souvenir shop hoping to sell Godfather items. A nice church, an anti-mafia museum in a palazzo seized from the Mafia (we passed on this due to the price and time required), and some interesting rock formations. Not worth going out of your way for it. And, it is out of the way.

(Before this trip report ends, we will visit four towns with Godfather film locations.)

Another fascinating journey, Whitehall, even the small ‘unappealing’ towns seem interesting.

We had read that Prizzi, a high mountain village, had a castle worth seeing. It wasn’t. However, this is another village with breathtaking scenery, but no tourists and little activity. We had to ask for help finding the castle, which is tiny, hard to figure it out, even when standing next to it, and not open. We did enjoy the walk down from the highest parts of the town, where we saw many murals. Steep inclines, stone out-croppings, and lots of old churches and alleyways. A short distance south of Corleone and even further “out of the way.”

Back to the seashore and a more resort-like feel in our inexpensive waterfront apartment in Castellammare del Golfo. As the last fog zipped away, we found many seafood places, but we just wanted some pizza and wine. Sometimes, it’s hard to find a great spot for a shared five euro pizza, especially when they can sell a fish dinner for many times that amount. But here it was: wood oven, great pizza, friendly service and one of the best seats in town.

The after dinner walk was along a two block pedestrian street, with colorful shops and nice restaurants and bars. This included gelato served with a big smile. We did run into an attack from four hooligans with those long harpoon-like sticks (it may feel like a resort, but it is a fishing community too). Kidding. Four nice little happy boys against an old guy made for some fun and eventually a standing ovation from a nearby restaurant, presumably from parents, grandparents and others happy that someone else was entertaining their little ones.

we'll be in Castellammare del Golfo on the first 2 nights of our upcoming trip -- would love to know the name of the place where you had pizza. might be a nice meal after the long night and day of travel!

We had those agave “asparagus” all over our property when lived in Arizona as did our neighbors.

I have enjoyed your report from Sicily so much!

HappyTrvlr : We estimated that the asparagus-like spike we photographed was 15 feet tall and have read that some can grow to 40 feet.



I can’t believe the crowds in Palermo, wow! We were there for five days starting the Easter weekend and there were mostly locals, except for quite a few French Canadians. Actually, it wasn’t crowded at all throughout our trip, mid to end April. The weather was also lovely, except for rain the Easter weekend. Bright sunny days, though the evenings were chilly and you needed a jacket.

geetika : The train station was extremely quiet; we even had a couple of great Aperol spritzes from a cafe attached to a McDonalds there. Last time we were in a McDonalds, except for a possible bathroom stop, was decades ago. We were guessing that the crowds largely were locals, maybe a Sunday thing. Not a ton of obvious tourists or Americans.


Another fascinating journey, Whitehall, even the small ‘unappealing’ towns seem interesting.

Adelaidean : We visited 76 cities, towns and other locales, and we considered few “unappealing” and all WERE interesting. Sicily has so many more dimensions that we ever expected, despite a couple of prior shorter visits there.


Looks like a great place to visit for my next trip [img]blob:https://www.fodors.com/a019d0bb-f41a-44b1-a628-bbbbbc468192[/img] Thanks for the info.

vic789 : You are welcome.

I forgot that this pizza place was also the all organic place. So, not 5 euro for this pizza. It was 7 euro or 3.50 each.

Castellammare del Golfo is a mouthful of a name, especially when compared to our next base, Cefalu, or Palermo, where the nearest airport is half an hour to the east. It is a beautiful spot, where the mountains meet the sea. It has the usual parking challenges, although we were able to easily park right in front of our building located right on the harbor. It is very walkable and surprisingly not very touristy, even on warm days in May.

We considered lunch at a couple of places, a seafront terrace with the longest cannoli we had ever seen and a main square where nicely dressed waiters delivered pizzas to the tables from across the street. But we decided our own balcony was the best spot, so we shopped like Italians for the simplest of lunches. A little meat market provided some prosciutto, cheese and pesto. A nice bakery some crusty bread. And a friendly fruit and vegetable seller provided some fresh arugula, basil and bright red tomatoes and some fruit for tomorrow's breakfast.