Brendan and I stumbled upon Sicily during our honeymoon research when we were struggling to find a warm “honeymoon vibe” destination at the end of October. When we thought of a honeymoon, we were craving a hot, in the sun everyday kind of beach experience. Your mind instantly goes to the Bahamas, Florida, California, Greece, Portugal, and the list goes on. We wanted to be as abroad as possible, so the states were off the table. Looking at October this list was quickly nixed due to weather not being ideal or (Greece) islands being closed due to the end of the season. Then walks in Sicily.

We are huge fans of Italy and had both traveled back in high school with our families but had never been to Sicily. With some quick research we realized that the chances of it being hot enough for a beach experience in late October looked feasible. Yay! The research that ensued after that discovery was really exciting; the food, the terrain, the wine, and more. We made it official, booked our flights and hotels and made Sicily the first stop for our honeymoon during the last week of October 2022.

Spoiler alert, we loved it so much that we decided to revisit Sicily again in October 2023 for our first wedding anniversary! Follow along as we go through all the areas we explored during our 2 visits to Sicily and show you how it just might be the best destination for off-season travel.

Sicily

Home to almost 5 million Sicilians, Sicily is the largest island in Italy and offers a one of a kind Italian experience. While visiting, you can expect a wonderful variety of Italian culture mixed with a Mediterranean influence. Throughout the island are many still standing, intact Greek temples from as early as 10,000 B.C. representing one of the many groups of people that used to call Sicily home. Many Sicilians refer to themselves as such instead of Italians, and their pride for their region is evident in everything you can experience while on the island. Sicily is also home to the largest, active volcano in Europe, Mt. Etna. Situated in the northeast of the island, Etna stems off the coast with hundreds of vineyards planted at it’s base. Of all Sicilian wine, Etna wine is a prized product of the area due to its unique flavor from the volcanic soil.

When considering visiting Sicily for yourself know that you will truly get the best of all vacations including incredible cuisine and wine, breathtaking views and landscapes on the coast and inland, and a rich and friendly culture difficult to find in other corners of Europe.

The primary language in Sicily is Italian and keep in mind that many of them only speak Italian. In the bigger cities and at the hotels we picked we were happily surprised to run into a good amount of people who also spoke English. It was fun though exploring the smaller towns with little to no people speaking English, making us pick up a few Italian phrases for the remainder of our trip. We jokingly will still throw out “buonissimo” and “ciao bella” to each other for fun even now.

How to Get to Sicily

My toxic trait is I will pay an egregious amount of money for the convenience of a direct flight. Unfortunately, there are no direct flights from United States to Sicily (If you discover otherwise, hook a girl up!). But needless to say, it is 100% worth the layover. We have had layovers in both Zurich and Munich on our way to Sicily but there are many other cities that offer layovers as well. There are 2 airports on the Island, PMO in the city of Palermo, the capital of Sicily and CTA in the city of Catania.  We have flown in/out of both airports and they are very easy to navigate. PMO, is on the northwest side of the island and CTA is in the northeast side. 

Do I need a car?

You absolutely need a rental car to get around the island; it is about a 4-hour drive to go across the whole island, which if you do this, it offers a beautiful drive. Thankfully, from either airport you can access the entire island. Sometimes one airport has cheaper flights than the other, so make sure to double check before booking. A car is 100% needed to get to all of the off the beaten path beaches, explore little towns, and be on your own schedule for the entirety of your trip.

Sicilians can be funny drivers who love to zip past you and swerve in and out of their lanes, but it never felt unsafe while experiencing it ourselves. They always seemed to have a funny impatience to pass us, but then would just coast in front of us for the rest of a drive. Almost all of the roads are 2 lanes so it can sometimes be necessary to pass people, just be smart about it. When it came to parking we thankfully never had any issues, even in the busier cities. Some of the streets, depending on where you are, have very narrow cobblestone roads and alleys that you may need to navigate but we made sure to do research ahead of time to know exactly where to drive and park in the towns.

The Terrain

Sicily really surprised us in the variety of it’s landscape. Driving through the center of the island you will find rolling hills of limestone covered in greenery and vineyards with ancient Greek temples in the backdrop. Along the coasts, you will run into hundreds of beaches and rocky cliffs hanging over the ocean just begging for you to pull over and jump in. And mixed in between the coast line and the center of the island are hundreds of one-of-a-kind towns and cities tucked into the limestone rock boasting with Sicilian culture. Sicily has much more elevation than we were expecting and it made for incredible views along our drives throughout the island.

The Weather

Both of our trips were in October and both times were consistently 75-80 F degrees every day with cooler evenings being in the 60s. Perfection! We’ve been told by locals and have seen through research that their summer months can get quite hot at a ripe 100-105 degrees F in peak heat July, so we were thrilled to be going in October. For our travel research we have used Weather Spark to help with looking at weather trends for the times of year for where we are traveling and this has helped properly prepare us for all of our trips.

The Cuisine

The food you can expect here has an emphasis on seafood mixed with Italian staples like pizza and pasta. Our personal favorite Sicilian foods are the massive arancini (rice balls usually filled with a beef ragu or eggplant and cheese) and their super special almond granita with brioche (frozen almond treat typically eaten for breakfast). We had also found wonderful sandwich shops with varying paninis and other baked goods which were always a 10/10 for our packed beach lunches. Other memorable dishes we enjoyed were swordfish pastas with hazelnuts and veggies, eggplant carpaccio (eggplant and bell pepper marinated in olive oil, served cold), freshly grilled sea bass either paired with olive oil and lemon or with homemade pasta, and cannoli filled with ricotta cheese and pistachios.

North Western Sicily

Scopello

Oh Scopello, Scopello, Scopello. Brendan found this wonderful area of Sicily by chance while looking on google maps. Following the coastline, we zoomed in and found this little remote town a 5-minute drive away from the water. It is adorable with essentially only 2 main streets. There are maybe 5 restaurants and cafes and very few air bnbs and hotels. We stayed outside of the town and would drive into it for dinners which worked well for us. We loved Scopello but it is definitely out of the way from a lot of the main attractions in Sicily so keep that in mind when considering a visit, but if seclusion is what you seek Scopello is the perfect destination.

Picture birds chirping and flying past your window, sea breeze and the soft rushing of waves hitting the concrete patio below. To us, it was heaven.

Where we Stayed- Tonnara Di Scopello

-Hotel by the sea

-5 minutes drive to Scopello with restaurants and shops

-We recommend at least 3 nights to get into full relaxation mode and to be able to truly soak it up. 

Where we ate-

-Scopello Restaurants 

Lo Zingaro Nature Reserve

we recommend bringing water shoes just in case. Most beaches are covered in different sized pebbles mixed with sand, and a small amount are rocky cliffs so having your feet covered will make for a more enjoyable experience getting in and out of the water.

One of the best parts about Scopello’s location is its proximity to the Lo Zingaro Nature Reserve. During our first trip to Sicily, this was one of our favorite stops and only a 10-minute drive away from the town.

South Western Sicily

Scala dei Turchi

North Eastern Sicily

South Eastern Sicily

Scicli

I just want to squeeze Scicli and bottle it up and take it with us everywhere we go. It is simply the cutest, quaintest town. When planning our second trip to Sicily we had the one rule that we had to stay in a new area than from that of our honeymoon. We found this town just by searching for unique Air BnBs in Sicily and found this one. This is usually the way we decide where to go when traveling! It ended up being the perfect home base for us while exploring southeast Sicily. 20 min drive to some beaches, and a 45 min drive to the bigger town of Noto. Scicli is small to medium sized with beautiful stone streets blending into the natural hills and cliffs of the area. We loved walking into town from our Air BnB in the mornings and grabbing breakfast at our favorite granita shop and picking up picnic items for our day out exploring. You will run into many baroque styled churches mixed with small boutique shops and restaurants. Luck for us foodies, Scicli has a booming food scene and the food we had each day was incredible. We also only saw very few tourists during the day visiting the town for a tour, but none of them seemed to be staying in Scicli like we were. Cue off-season and this was the big perk of our trip.

-add restaurants

Noto

Noto is a sweet medium sized town on the southeast coast of Sicily. Thanks to “The White Lotus”, Noto has officially been placed on the map. This does not always bode well for traveling with the goal of less tourists but thankfully Noto has handled it’s fame well. Noto has everything you could need in a European town and is extremely close to the beach and other fun sites; which is why it was an easy decision to visit on both of our trips!

There is a long main street with a bunch of restaurants, cafes, and gelato/granita shops. North of the main street you will find grid like streets scaling up a gradual hill with more shops and restaurants scattered throughout. It is small enough to make you feel like a local quickly but also big enough to offer an array of activities and food during your stay. It is possible to drive a car through this town, but not down every street so be mindful while navigating. Thankfully, there is a surface lot in the center of town allowing visitors to park either daily or overnight, we used this ourselves and did not have any issues.

If you only get to visit a few areas during your trip to Sicily, definitely make Noto one of them! It is a wonderful place due to its ideal location to the beach and easy accessibility to neighboring towns.

Just a 20 minute drive will land you at one of our favorite beaches on the entire island, Spiaggia di Calamosche. This beach is unique in that you have to walk along a short trail (~ 1 mile) to get to the actual beach. This usually will scare off most tourists and you will be left with a fairly empty beach only filled with the locals. As your arrive at the trailhead for the beach there is a monitored parking lot for you to park (5 euro), you then will walk over to the entrance of the trail where you will check-in and pay another 5 euro to enter. Then you will enjoy a leisurely walk along a sandy/rocky trail with glimpses of the water as you near the beach (be careful if walking in flip flops, but definitely doable). Then you will arrive to large stone staircase down to the water and then you can pick your spot for the day and enjoy a picnic lunch! Last time we came here we brought 2 sandwiches from a Noto cafe and a bottle of white wine for our afternoon.

Ragusa

A wonderful medium sized town nestled in the cliffs of the southeast side of Sicily. We only got the chance to spend an afternoon in Ragusa and we definitely want to return for a more in depth visit.

-Nache

-Il libertyna

-Crocifisso

-Anche Gli Angeli

Wineries

-Tenuta La Favola

-Planeta

• Castellamare del golfo
• pineta del gelsomineto

Marzamemi (Town in South East)

-Sesamo (Scicli)

-Cafe Sicilia (Noto)

-Nache (Noto)

-Manna (Noto)

-Crocifisso (Noto)

-Nivera gelato (Scicli)

-Il Duomo (Ragusa)

-Cannolia (Scicli)