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New golf courses are scheduled to open in Eastern Sicily. Giuseppe and Salvatore Leonardi, owners of Picciolo Golf Club in Castiglione di Sicilia nearby Mount Etna, affirm the necessity of promoting a system for a different type of tourism in Sicily.
One of these golf courses is scheduled to open in Carlentini, between Catania and Siracusa, in 2010. The golf course should raise by the ocean with beautiful breathtaking views. The other golf course is planned in Trappitello nearby Taormina.
Our best hope at SicilyGuide is that these two golf courses will not be delayed as the Verdura Golf & Spa Resort di Sciacca by Rocco Forte Hotels.
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">A friend gave me a book, Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons, a couple of weeks ago and I have to say that I am really enjoying it…
‘Sicily struck me
then as the most fascinating place I had ever visited. I didn’t change that opinion over the intervening years, no matter where I travelled. I meant to go back. Time and again I made plans. Time and again I was thwarted.’At the age of twenty-six Matthew Fort first visited the island of Sicily. He and his brother arrived in 1973 expecting sun, sea and good food, but they were totally unprepared for the lifelong effect of this most extraordinary of islands. Thirty years later, older and a bit wiser - but no less greedy - Matthew finally returns. Travelling round the island on his scooter, Monica, he samples exquisite antipasti in rundown villages, delicate pastries in towns that clung to the edge of vertical hillsides, and goes fishing for anchovies beneath a star-scattered sky. Once again this enigmatic island casts its spell, and Matthew rediscovers its beauty, the intensity of its flavours, and finds himself digging into the darkness of Sicily’s past as well as
some mysteries of his own.
Sad news for the Sicilian tourism industry. This year, tourism is down 25% compared to the same months of last year. The minor islands are suffering the most from this slowdown.
What’s wrong with the Sicilian tourism industry? I have 10 reasons and you can add more (if you like it).
1- Prices are too high. The value (quality/price) of a vacation in Sicily is not comparable to the one of another tourist destination in the Mediterranean Sea. Why a tourist should spend more for less?
2- The euro is too strong. There is little that can be done about it, but Greece and Spain have the euro and they are not down 25% in tourist arrivals.
3- The Italian economy is not growing. So, Italians stay at home and do not travel.
4- Infrastructures (roads, hotels) are old and/or completely absent in some areas.
5- There is no fresh water in some areas (i.e. Agrigento).
6- Service is not stellar (to put it mildly). Tourists come one season and run away the following one.
7- Sicily’s weather has become too hot in the last few summers and arsonists do not help to cool it down… Is it cooler in Spain or Greece? I doubt it.
8- The 2007 marketing plan of the Sicilian Region was not strategically executed. It is not uncommon that lots of resources are not wisely spent.
9- Sicily still lacks a serious tourism development plan.
10- Sicily is left to improvisation and does not rely on a serious marketing strategy.
I strongly hope to be wrong. I was in Sicily only for one week this summer and people who live there might have a better idea…
TravelTravel
It may take a mindshift to think of magnificent Greek ruins in Italy but the Greeks were everywhere a long time before the Romans made something of themselves, and the ancient cities of Akragas and Selinunte on the southern coast of Sicily are equally as dramatic and fascinating as Rome’s Parthenon.
Sicily is like that - surprising and contradictory.
Read more at NZHerald.co.nz
TravelTravelMy friend, Franca Calderone, is a professional photographer in Sicily. Here are some beautiful pics of her last trip to Mount Etna. Absolutely gorgeous!
mount etna Travelmount etna TravelTHE North West of Sicily remains one of the more undiscovered areas of Sicily boasting the best golden sandy beaches, aquatic nature reserves, picturesque harbour towns, and amazing architecture with towns such as Marsala, Palermo and Trapani.
Read more at BirminghamMail.net
TravelTravelAs more and more backpackers pop up near my adopted home in Ireland this summer, I’m reminded of my own freewheeling adventures as a budget traveler. One particular episode, though, stands out above all the others.
In the spring of 1986, after several weeks’ worth of trains and planes, I found myself sitting alone on an unfamiliar doorstep in Sicily. I also found myself questioning the wisdom of traveling 5,000 miles from my family home in Medford to revive my father’s neglected lineage.
Read more at Boston.com
TravelTravelOften regarded as the island being kicked by the boot of Italy, Sicily is actually the largest Italian region and boasts glorious countryside, ancient archaeological sites and is the infamous home of the Italian mafia.
The island’s capital is Palermo and the city is more than 2,700 years old, although there is evidence of human settlement in the area from as long ago as 8000 BC. In 734 BC, the Phoenicians established the beginnings of today’s city because of its prime location on the coast. It is thought to be originally called Ziz, but the Greeks, who had a dominant presence on Sicily at the time, renamed it Panormus (meaning “all-port”) and from there it evolved into today’s name. Today, Palermo is home to around 650,000 inhabitants.
Read more at BestSyndication.com
TravelTravelThe NYTimes.com has put together 14 images of the capital of Sicily. Check them out at http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/07/27/travel/0727-36HOURS_index.html
TravelTravelSicily is the key to Italy, as Goethe once wrote, and one novel is the key to Sicily: “The Leopard,” Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s masterpiece. This tale of the decline and fall of the house of Salina, a family of Sicilian aristocrats, first appeared in 1958, but it reads more like the last 19th-century novel, a perfect evocation of a lost world.
Read mroe at IHT.com
TravelTravelAs an image of local Mediterranean democracy in action, it was hard to beat. Under the deep blue sky of late afternoon, and beneath the solemn gaze of 100 or more local citizens packed into a courtyard shaded by lemon trees, the new mayor and the new town council of the little Sicilian town of Salemi had just been sworn in. Squashed into dark suits and ties, the councillors stood up one after another to give speeches of immaculate boredom.
Yet the national media had flown down from Rome, not something you would expect at such a parochial event. The reason: the new mayor of Salemi (population: 11,254), is Vittorio Sgarbi: one of the oddest and most colourful figures in contemporary Italy. In turn he has been art critic, TV talk-show host, powerful functionary in the Culture Ministry, leader of his own political party, and culture tsar of Milan. Sgarbi has made personal re-invention his trade mark. This is his strangest incarnation to date.
Read more at the Independent.co.uk
TravelTravelI am not generally a fan of Michelin-starred restaurants.
It’s not that I have a problem with the guide per se, more that satisfying the demands of a guidebook originally designed to tell haute-bourgeoisie French motor-ists where to find Parisian-style fine dining seems to do strange things to chefs, making them complicit in a production-line approach that, however upmarket, has more in common with the box-ticking of Pizza Hut or Starbucks than with good cooking.
Read more at Time Online
Food & Wine TravelFood & Wine TravelAfter 800 days, the restauration works for the Palatine Chapel in Palermo have been completed. now the public can enjoy its view.
The Palatine Chapel is the royal chapel of the Norman kings of Sicily situated on the ground floor at the center of the Palazzo Reale in Palermo. The chapel was commissioned by Roger II of Sicily in 1132. It took eight years to build and many more to decorate with mosaics and fine art. The sanctuary, dedicated to Saint Peter, is reminiscent of a domed basilica. It has three apses, as is usual in Byzantine architecture, with six pointed arches (three on each side of the central nave) resting on recycled classical columns.
Architecture TravelArchitecture TravelYou are currently browsing the archives for the Travel category.