I better be Michael!!!!
Btw, while we are on the subject of the Godfather and Italians....The Godfather Returns book is a good read. Written by Mark Winegardner.
JoMaL, I know pizza is not sicilian but I was just putting into perspective how wop-ish my family is. My family always makes fun of me for how Americanized I am =[
The Godfather Returns is one of the books I read while in Italy. It does fill in some gaps between the three Puzo versions, adds some more characters, and delves into Fredo, Tom, and Clemenza much more then it does Michael. Overall, not a bad read either.
I am sure you are aware of where various Italian foods originated, WK. Sicily is a beautiful place, but Palermo is kind of a hard city to navigate and like Naples, the less time spent there the better. I prefer Erice and Siracusa. We also stayed on the Isle of Capri, Positano, and Sorrento and visited Pompei and Herculaneum.
Without being nosy could you tell me about how much a trip out there runs? I've wanted to go out there for a really long time, both to see a beautiful area and to see where my great grandmother and grandfather are from. I have 2 1/2 weeks paid vacation and I don't want to waste it going somewhere blah. I need to really recharge my batteries FAR FAR away from smog, traffic, and fake chests.
How much does a trip to Sicily cost?
That entire depends on how you want to do it. Join a tour group and you can pay thousands just to hang out with a bunch of people with whom you have nothing in common.
Because of the exchange rate (roughly $0.80 U.S. to E-1 Euro), my wife and I probably spent in the neighborhood of $5,000 to $6,000, but we spread it over a long time period. We paid for the air well in advance, we prepaid for rail passes and ferry crossings where we could. Several of the hotels or apartments where we stayed required a deposit to keep the reservation. We prepaid for most of the car expenses used in Sicily (the only part of Italy where we rented a car), and we charged as much as we could while there. We probably spent about $1,800 in cash during the trip because Southern Italy and Sicily are not that credit card happy as they are in the North, where we spent the first week of the trip (we spent about three weeks over there).
Italy is not the bargain that it used to be. When we first went to Italy back in the Eighties, everything seemed dirt cheap, but the country was a nightmare to navigate due to strikes, inconsistent midday siestas, long lines at the banks and exchange counters, and very inconsistent opening and closing times for museums and sites.
Now, everything is much more efficient, trains run on schedule, the sites are (mostly) open when they say they will be, and the people are more serious and industrious. Thank the EU for that.
This trip was more strenuous then some previous trips we have taken to Italy. We flew in to Venice, went from there to Sirmione on Lake Garda, then to Florence, Siena, Orvieto, Naples - took a night train from Naples to Siracusa in Sicily (they put your sleeper car directly on the ferry over to Sicily), drove clear across Sicily, stopping at Agrigento on the way, to the hill town of Erice, visited Marsala to see the Punic War ship they found there, on to Palermo (we could not manage to fit in Corleone), took a night ferry back to Naples and continued the same day over to Capri to stay, then back to Sorrento to catch a bus down the Amalfi Coast to Positano (to see this lovely town, rent "Only You", with Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr., with a funny cameo by Billy Zane - one of my wife's favorite movies), back to Sorrento for two nights stay in an apartment - the best place we stayed the entire trip -, and finally to Rome, where we flew out.
We pre-booked every place we stayed on the trip. Mostly these were budget type places and they varied quite a bit. You pay a fortune to stay in Venice and Rome, but Southern Italy tends to be a bit cheaper. Decent rooms go for anywhere from 80 Euros a night to the 125.00 we paid in Rome for a less then nice room. It was okay, but at that price you can stay at a Villa out in the Tuscan countryside. The apartment in Erice cost 80 Euros a night and was old, but fine with us. Food is not so cheap. Both lunches and dinners cost roughly the same, and unless you like to picnic for lunch (not a very Italian thing to do), you are looking at spending about 50 to 60 Euros per meal for two, including wine. More if you end up eating both a "primi" and a "secondi" course, which we hardly every did. An antipasta, a pasta dish, and perhaps one other contorni (sidedish), plus wine and water (you always buy your drinking water with dinner, with or without gas) and that is your meal.
I tried several secondi dishes, which are your basic steak, chicken, and fish courses, but I much, much, much preferred the pasta or risoto dishes in the primi section of the menu, and they were hearty enough to skip the secondi if you get a good antipasta or salad to go with it.
Tipping, by the way, is very arbitrary in Italy. You technically do not have to tip, but often we were told upon being handed the "il conto" that service was not included. It helps to check the tab to make sure a service charge was not added. That little trick was tried on me in Naples and I called the waiter on it, greatly embarassing him by doing so. Tourists, especially American tourists used to tipping, are easy targets for that one. But even if service is not listed, tipping is not expected but it is just appreciated. A normal tip on those occasions is about 12% of the total.
The most dangerous scam we faced was also tried on us on the ferry from Palermo to Naples. The cashier on board at the dinner buffet tried to tell us the 50 Euro note (only available from ATM machines - you NEVER get a note that large anywhere else) we used to pay for the meal was fake. He handed it back to me and asked for other money to pay for the meal. This, of course, was intended to embarass us, which, in turn would make us stupid American tourists not question this and try to cover up for the problem immediately. The only problem was that the bill he handed back to us (that's right, instead of keeping it and reporting it, he gave it back to us) was clearly not the bill I gave him, because I folded all my bills in a certain way and the one he gave back was old and very wrinkled. But I only noticed that later on. We got the manager, accused the cashier of passing bad money back, and got reimbursed, but what a bother. The manager was convinced when I pointed out two things: Why did the cashier give me back supposedly bad money, which the manager confirmed was bad, and what is the Bank Of Roma doing distributing supposedly bad Euros out of its ATM machines, which is the only way, as far as I could tell, anyone in Italy could even
GET a 50 Euro note?
Westkoast, I do not yet know the exact figures for this trip because all the charges have not yet come in, but past trips usually cost about as much as I have stated. We have gone to Europe at least once, sometimes more, every year since 1983 and lately it has cost us that much with the way we travel - backpacks, trains, budget accommodations, cars on occasion, and buses and ferries when needed. Museum passes, metro passes, and miscellaneous expenses add to it, but that is why you go.
The one area in which we do
NOT scrimp is food. We research restaurants and revisit favorites, regardless of the cost. Way too important to skip this important aspect of travel.
