I was living in Sicily at the time going to school in Siracusa. I already saw one of the largest Greek theaters in the world and took a trip around the city. As long as you don’t need a Visa to enter Italy you are able to stay for 3 months without getting one. I was living there for way more than a year and needed to get a “permesso di soggiorno (permission to stay for more than 3 months). While Italy is a modern western country not everything runs like it should. How many governments actually run efficiently I’m thinking (other than Germany)? But I digress.
I went to the government office to apply for the permesso di soggiorno and like true Italian chaos everyone and everything was well, everywhere. People were yelling and making the classic Italian hand gesture. I soon realized I wasn’t getting anything done. I met some new friends and decided to leave the office and not bother with it. I simply will leave the country every 3 months to reset my time in the country. My best option was to take a ferry out of Catania to Malta, a small country just south of Italy which I like to call the Caribbean of Europe.
Valletta, Malta
Malta is an incredible country to see; everyone speaks English, public transport is excellent, and there is tons of Malta sightseeing to do. I only had a weekend so I tried to pack in as much Malta sightseeing as I could. Once it was time to leave I took a ferry back to small town called Pozzallo in Sicily which I prefer to call middle of nowhere. You could use the restroom and the mayor would find out about it. Going through customs reminded me of warming a hot pocket up in the microwave. Yes that’s right I love hot pockets.
Mind you when I arrived in Malta at 2am I didn’t know where the hotel was. As I arrived in Pozzallo I had no idea how to get back to San Pietro Clarenza (small town on Mount Etna where I was living in Sicily at the time). While Sicily public transport is very good the trains don’t make it a priority to stop at middle of nowhere, Sicily. There were no taxis, no trains, no buses, nothing. There was one man that was providing a personal shuttle service to Catania and I immediately thought to myself: how legit is this? He did already have 5 gullible tourists that he took advantage of but I wasn’t going to be the sixth.
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Piazza del Duomo- Main Square in Catania, Sicily
I still had a lot of things to do in Sicily and I wanted to get back quickly but wasn’t willing to pay the 100 Euros he was asking for. I was sitting with two other backpackers and we looked at each other saying we would rather walk back. As soon as he said that we quickly replied “no”. No emotion or trying to haggle the price, just a simple no. He walked back to the van waited a second and came back. Then he said “come on it’s a good deal”. We replied “no”. He came down to 75 euros and we said 25. That’s when the funny Italian hand gestures started again. He scuffled back to the van and drove off promptly coming back in 10 minutes. Next time around we knew he was ours. We were going to get him like a foreigner in New York City. He came back and said 50 and we said 20, finally we agreed on 30 euros each.
Sicily Travel Advice: Never act like your desperate even if you really are. If you act like you aren’t interested you will always get a good deal.
one more major question I forgot to ask in my last post….how was the wifi in your apartment???? I didn’t see you mention it in your article and it is of paramount consideration when way-trading around globe. I find that when I ask landlords they are not always forthcoming.
I would highly recommend that you get a place that has built in wifi already activated… took me over a year to get phone and internet service in my apt… Sicily is third world compared to the rest of western Europe…
having a smartphone makes wdoners. just having wifi, can help a lot when walking in a city. this next time i am going to be carrying my camera, and extra memory storage for it, my nook color which i can carry as i walk and i can browse the web or read on the plane. my family thinks is crazy traveling like rick steves.. but it’s such a conformable travel. I like also carrying a durable plastic bag like the ones sold in supermarkets to carry laundry or bring things i cannot place in my bag.
Not sure you can reset an Itallian visa seeing as it is part of the Schegen area and it’s permissable for 90 days in 180 – no exceptions. Although it’s been rumoured that Italy is rather lax on penalties anyway. Anyway – guess you didn’t get fined anyway.
Peter this was before the Schegen visa existed
Ha ha ha 😀 “funny Italian hand gestures”… yes, I know.
But there are “funny hand gestures” that are actually offensive in Italy.