We leave Tunisia and take an easy and short one hour flight to Palermo, Sicily, where we rent a car for four days. From there we drive across Sicily, along the coast and through the mountains to Taormina.
There is of course a back story as to why we selected Sicily as a one month destination.
So here goes…
Once we had decided on Tunisia, we were in search of a destination nearby for the month that followed We were looking for ease of logistics (ie short flight) and a destination that would not give us extreme cold weather for the end of November, beginning December.
We considered Libya, which shares a desert with Tunisia. We always like to look at bordering countries and this is one that feels like an interesting destination. It’s close, it’s warm, and certainly off the beaten path (mostly due to a long running U.S. conflict with Qqadafi). However, getting visas turns out to be almost impossible.
Italy is a short distance away and after all, who doesn’t love Italy??
Easy to get to from Tunisia, as it’s so close, but also warmer than Greece, Croatia, Turkey, which were all under consideration as possibilities. Not big cities but rather smaller towns are what we are interested in. We have been to Venice (in the winter), to Florence, to Rome (and I’ve been to the region around Lucca many years back).
We find and book an Airbnb in Lecce, in the region of Italy known as Puglia. This region is under visited and often overlooked by most travellers who tend to favor Tuscany. (Much like Tunisia is looked over by most tourists who favor Morocco).
We do have an interesting story about our interest in this particular region of Italy… Puglia is the heart of the agricultural belt and is less expensive than Tuscany, has a beautiful coastlinr and well is just under-recognized.
A few years ago we read a few articles houses being offered in Italy for ONE euro! Why would this be a thing? Well… Many small villages in Italy were being left by the young people in search of economic opportunities in the big cities. The impact of this exodus, is that villages have been dying for the last thirty years. One of the mayors of one such town came up with the idea to bring in new people by way of offering abandoned houses for a symbolic euro, against the promise of buyers restoring homes. Different towns put priorities on different criteria to qualify. For example, some required the entries to be families with young children so as to revitalize the local schools, etc. Sounds too good to be true right?
However, it is real. Once it started and got off on a roll, it became thousands and thousands of people entering to win 25-30 homes in each village. You probably won’t be too surprised to read that Ben, ever the optimist, decided to enter. Amid much hilarity from myself and our sons. Much like my wanting to enter the Airbnb contest. Like seriously.. what are the odds of winning?
So he entered. He put together an incredible entry with photos of all of us and our combined and specific talents and skills in the family. Translated it into Italian. And we all forgot about it..
Until… he won!!! YES! Against all odds.
You don’t get to choose your house. The one we were selected to receive for one euro, was well, more of a shell of a house. We rallied the troops by talking to our sons over Zoom, called it Project Pasta and got all of their input of ideas, thoughts, how to move forward. However, due to the high cost to rebuild this house we decided not to proceed. Great for people with plenty of extra $$ to invest, but not practical for us. To replace w roof, walls, electricity etc was too big of an investment and plus it had to be done within a two year period (this was about a year before Covid). So sadly, we had to let that go. However, we still retained an interest in the area of Puglia.
We selected an Airbnb and booked it. Then we started looking at weather predictions and saw that Sicily was ten degrees higher than Puglia in December. That did it! We cancelled our reservation and started a new search. Sicily it would be! And the more we read about it, talk to two friends, one Italian and one that grew up in the region, the more interested we got… The history, the specific cuisine, the architecture, the higher temperatures.
We narrowed it down to two very appealing towns both on the East coast of Sicily. Taormina was one and Siracusa the other. Hard to choose. So we didn’t. We ultimately landed on Siracusa as our long term stay on the Live Anywhere on Airbnb, and Taormina as our short stop en route. A good way to break up the drive from the airport.
If you have not yet subscribed to our YouTube channel, but are enjoying our videos, please do subscribe and then hit the “bell” tab, so you get a “ping” when a new video is posted. Also, we love getting comments on the channel and will answer them there. This helps us draw a larger audience to our youtube videos. So if you feel inspired, please let us know…
Thanks for reading the back story on Italy and enjoy the video below!
Hi, Peta and Ben – I want to commend you both on how well your posts and videos are put together. I just felt like I’ve had a wonderful trip to Taormina…without leaving the comfort of my couch! The background music, words and historical info in your videos must be an incredible amount of work…but create amazing results for the viewer. Thank you!
Thank you so much for this great feedback! I think we have locked into an interesting formula whereby we now use the blog as a way to tell the more personal back story and the YouTube video as a multi media approach.
Yes! A crazy ridiculous number of hours that goes into making a YouTube video.. fur us anyway. So far the pattern every time is that the last twenty percent of work has us pulling our hair out and sweating we will never do it again. And we used to think the blog was time consuming. This takes it to a whole new level. On the other hand, once the vlog is done, we look back and say,” wow, this is pretty good!” So we will soldier on as long as we can manage the workload.
We are learning a ton about the process of “video making” and since stretching our skill set is one of our goals for this Airbnb period, the YouTube activity is certainly delivering this aspect of the journey.
Ben
So enjoying following along and hearing about “project pasta “!
Thank you so much! Ah yes Project Pasta unfortunately died an untimely death. But hey it was fun to dream for a while…
There was a TV show about some celebrity rehabbing one of those one euro houses in Italy, but I can’t remember the name of the town or the celebrity (I know the name of almost no celebrities.) Anyhow, don’t blame you for walking away from an expensive project! But you are so wise to visit Sicily now…enjoy and thanks for sharing with us!
Thanks Ann, Yes, we have been reading a variety of articles about the people that did participate in the one euro, and in some cases more than that house project. Seems there were, like always, mixed results. The one part that was particularly challenging for us i was completing the project within a certain amount of time. In retrospect, with Covid, perhaps they would have been more forgiving on the time line. But it certainly was a huge investment on many levels.
We have loved our month in Sicily… more videos to come (hopefully).
Thanks for reading and leaving your comments.
Peta
How wonderful to spend a month in Sicily. We made a stop there once and loved it. Enjoy!
Darlene, we feel extremely fortunate to be spending a month in Sicily and especially enjoying the fact that there are very few tourists at this time of the year. Wish it were about ten degrees warmer, as our tropical blood has hard time dealing with the night time below sixty degrees (F) Ah, can’t have it all!
Peta
Love following you! Your posts are amazing, so well constructed and written! Thank you both for sharing. Keep safe, keep healthy and keep traveling!!!!!!
Deena thank you kindly for this enthusiastic positive response to our blog and video. Hope you have subscribed to the YouTube channel and that you will share comments there too if you feel so inspired. The YouTube algorithm loves comments, and so do we!
Peta
Wow! You make really good videos, I mean really good. I’m sure it helps to be as engaged as you are with a lovely place like Taormina, and to be there as part of the back story. But this is quite the work of art. Shows your sense of adventure off quite wonderfully. Thank you & looking forward to more.
“It’s raining olives!” Love it.
Thank you Johnny for such kind praise! Taormina can’t help but impress ~ a lot of history, beauty all packed into one small package.
It’s good to hear that the video gives one a good idea of how we roll… because of course that part of travel is very personal and different for everyone. We are generating a lot of footage so that hopefully when we do put the videos together, they capture the essence of our discovery process.
It was great fun to stumble upon the olive pickers and to try our hand at that.
Thanks for watching and leaving your feedback.
Peta
I loved hearing the location selection backstory, and the video is great! (Sooo much work, as you note. Ben’s history lesson alone would require some time, and choosing and editing all the other video indeed seems daunting.) It surprised me to hear that Italy would be warmer than Greece, but I guess it depends on which part, and it totally makes sense that Sicily is warmer than the mainland. In any case, I’m glad you chose it so we could see it! I have a circumnavigating road trip of Sicily as one of my wish list trip items, but who knows when all the pent-up travel wishes will be fulfilled?! Enjoy the rest of your month!
Thanks Lex.
When we did our research on the weather and expected temperatures Sicily came out as being one of the warmest spots in Europe for this time of the year. But as each week went by it got colder and colder. The days when the sun was out were glorious, but the window of sun was four hours a day maximum and then the days when it rained or was overcast, we really felt the cold. Perhaps because we didn’t have proper winter jackets, just thin wool ones and we were also walking everywhere. And even so, it was well worth it.
A road trip through Sicily would be wonderful. Spring and Fall are probably good times of the year to do that.
Peta
Taormina looks wonderful! Great vistas …Love the impromtu visit to the orchards with the olives and oranges….brings back good memories of the strong aroma of oranges in orchards I have walked through . Thanks!
We did love Taormina, but glad we chose it as our short stop and Siracusa as our month long stay. Glad you enjoyed the impromptu stop at an olive harvest. It was fun to see that in action and to get a feel for the personality of the orchard owners. And those oranges were juicy and delicious! Thanks for watching the video and leaving us your feedback.
Peta
No way you (well, Ben) actually participated in this 1 euro Italian project. We heard about this years ago as well and contemplating the concept. The catch, of course, is all the money needed to rebuild the house. I wonder if this way is actually cheaper than buying a house there that is already renovated. I loved the back story for your Sicily choice and couldn’t agree more about picking the destination with the warmest weather.
Yes, we entered the 1 euro Italian house process and were amazed when we heard back and were accepted. Well actually, I was amazed and Ben was not as he was quite sure his entry would catch their attention. He went all out and told a good story about what we would do with the property. In some cases, people luck out and get houses that don’t require a large amount of renovation. But for this reason, more recently villages are now offering two different choices. The 1 euro house that needs renovating and then a between 10 and 20,000 house which has less work that needs to be done and can be moved into right away.
Well Sicily may have had the warmest weather, but on days when the sun didn’t come out, we were really cold towards the last week. Think cold rainy day in Gent! We also didn’t have down jackets, just think woolen ones so probably should have been better prepared. Anyhow we still had an amazing experience but won’t be going back to Europe in the winter any time soon!
Peta
You won! I guessed that was coming. 🙂 Even though it didn’t work out for you, what a marvellous opportunity this must be for the right people.
Yes, it could have worked out had we had the funds to do the restoration. A lot more extensive than we hoped or anticipated. But definitely a great opportunity and worthwhile endeavor if one has the $$.
Hahaha…I cannot believe you were (however briefly) part of the 1 Euro villa plan! Anyways, it’s always such fun to read about your adventures, which seem ongoing despite the obstacles of Covid. Wishing you both a lovely New Year.
Thanks so much. Sorry for this belated reply, somehow we missed your comment.
Yes it was fun to get selected for the 1 Euro villa plan and to dream of making it happen and had we had the funds, it no doubt would have changed our life trajectory.
Due to our selection in the Airbnb program we really had to make a decision with regards to Covid and how we wanted to proceed. Given that it really was everywhere at the time, we decided that as long as we were careful, it wouldn’t make that much difference if we were in Mexico, or Italy or the U.S. It does of course add a lot of logistics to travel as well as expense.
Peta
It is lovely to read more about your year on the road with the Live Anywhere on Airbnb program, Peta and Ben. There’s always quite a few places to choose and decide to stay and visit, and coordinating can be like a puzzle. Like you, weather also influences where I decide to go and I will most certainly choose to go to a warmer place over a colder one.
That’s hilarious a few years ago Ben entered the village competition, forgot about it and won. It didn’t sound like much effort at all XD Pity that it didn’t work out in the end but that’s a good story to tell. Really love how you approach such opportunities with a lot of optimism and positive energy – and that’s how you attract the energy right back 🙂
Looking forward to hearing more about Sicily. Take care x
Mabel, interestingly it was quite a significant amount of effort to win the Italian competition. Ben went above and beyond to make his entry stand out among thousands of entries. he added photos, translated it to Italian and took quite a lot of time with his entry. So much so that he told me when he entered “we are going to win this!!”. He had the opposite feeling when we entered the Airbnb competition where he felt that the odds were just too low. So there ya go… One never knows.
But yes, definitely agree that one needs to approach these kind of endeavors with optimism and one’s best efforts to at least stand a chance of being noticed in the crowd.
Thanks for your thoughtful feedback, we always enjoy hearing from you Mabel.
Peta
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