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Siciliy is a beautiful place and certainly worth a visit. My mother is from just outside of Palermo, and have driven down with family several times. Never been camping there weather is nice well into October, but beware of the thunder storms later on into September and October, they are torrential. If you like beaches (mondello beach outside of palermo is one of the nicest in europe in my view), nice weather, great food and plenty of historical sites, (greek, roman, norman, moors, etc), it's a great place to be. If it were me I'd get out there in september, many places start to close down later in the year, Sicily is mainly a destination for Italians, so it's busy in august then calms down once the August holiday is over.

As for driving if you are in the slightest bit a nervous driver sicily is not the place for you, they drive like mad-men, and YOU WILL NEED EYES IN THE BACK AND SIDES OF YOUR HEAD. It is almost a competition on who can go the fastest and do the most stupid thing and some things often defy the laws of physics.

Just another point on driving, hire cars in Sicily are fairly expensive, or at least they were, the one and only time I flew there. Most of which seems to be because it is highly probable that if you drive through a big city in Sicily (palermo, catania, messina, or even a little village come to think of it), without having previous experience of their antics, you are likely to get a bit of a bump. On the occasion were I had a hire car because it was a company rate I was not able to take out the insurance damage waiver either, luckily I escaped bump free but only just, having taken evasive action on several occasions.

The buses in Sicily are pretty good though, and are reasonably priced also. Trains are okay but can be a bit ad-hoc except for the main route (palermo - messina - roma).

Quote: Originally posted by Fudge59 on 12/3/2007

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Surprised to see this thread being bumped!

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