Our 5-day trip to Sicily started months earlier with emails to Michele Gallo of Sicilytravel.net to plan our visit to my husband’s grandparents home towns of Licata, Montelegro and Siculiana. By providing Michele with birth and death information, he researched our family’s roots and helped us plan a trip that was unforgettable.

Our journey started with luxurious private transportation from the Catania airport to Agrigento (2 ½ hours) where we stayed at the Hotel del Valle. The next morning Michele and driver Nicolo picked us up for the drive to Licata, the birth and resting place of my husband’s paternal grandfather. Michele was instrumental in finding the homes where he was born and died, along with working with the local authorities to find his tomb in the local cemetery. We spent the day seeing the town, walking the streets and seeing the fantastic view of the sea from his grave.

Day 2 was to visit the towns of Montelegro and Siculiana, the birth cities of my husband’s maternal grandparents. Here Michele also found the homes where they were born. We visited the Mother church and had a fantastic lunch at a Michelin rated LaScogliera – the Pasta Norma and swordfish was fantastic!

Our family does not speak Italian, but Michele speaks English very well and he spoke to the locals and translated everything for us.

We also did a tour to Valle dei Templi, a Greek architectural site. Michele is extremely knowledgeable of this site and explained in detail the history of the historic ruins. At night, we had a beautiful view of the lights on the temple from our hotel.

Our checkout and departure from the hotel was quite hectic (6 adults and 2 children) and we had a long drive to the airport in Palermo. Unfortunately, we did not discover until we were 15 minutes from the airport that 3 of the passports were left in the room safe! Our driver Nicolo did not speak English but could tell that we had a problem. Sicily does not have UPS or Federal Express service and we were frantic on how my daughter-in-law and grandchildren would get their passports to return to the states! Using an airline agent to translate and relay our problem, Nicolo called Michele back in Agrigento who arranged for a relative to pick up the passports and drive them 3 hours to the airport! They prevented what could have been a disaster and we were extremely grateful!

Our trip to Sicily is one we will always remember, and Michele and his staff were a big part of making it so. I highly recommend his services