An ancient Greek ship recently raised off the coast of southern Sicily, Italy, is the biggest and best maintained vessel of its kind ever found, archaeologists say.
At a length of nearly 70 feet (21 meters) and a width of 21 feet (6.5 meters), the 2,500-year-old craft is the largest recovered ship built in a manner first depicted in Homer’s Iliad, which is believed to date back several centuries earlier.
Read more at the National Geograhic
Sad news for the Sicilian tourism industry. This year, tourism is down 25% compared to the same months of last year. The minor islands are suffering the most from this slowdown.
What’s wrong with the Sicilian tourism industry? I have 10 reasons and you can add more (if you like it).
1- Prices are too high. The value (quality/price) of a vacation in Sicily is not comparable to the one of another tourist destination in the Mediterranean Sea. Why a tourist should spend more for less?
2- The euro is too strong. There is little that can be done about it, but Greece and Spain have the euro and they are not down 25% in tourist arrivals.
3- The Italian economy is not growing. So, Italians stay at home and do not travel.
4- Infrastructures (roads, hotels) are old and/or completely absent in some areas.
5- There is no fresh water in some areas (i.e. Agrigento).
6- Service is not stellar (to put it mildly). Tourists come one season and run away the following one.
7- Sicily’s weather has become too hot in the last few summers and arsonists do not help to cool it down… Is it cooler in Spain or Greece? I doubt it.
8- The 2007 marketing plan of the Sicilian Region was not strategically executed. It is not uncommon that lots of resources are not wisely spent.
9- Sicily still lacks a serious tourism development plan.
10- Sicily is left to improvisation and does not rely on a serious marketing strategy.
I strongly hope to be wrong. I was in Sicily only for one week this summer and people who live there might have a better idea…
For generations, Americans have been dependable consumers of Italian wines. From the straw-covered bottles of Chianti to the super reds of Tuscany, Italian wines have been on restaurant lists and wine shop shelves for as long as most of us can remember.
But the wines of Sicily have been missing. Indeed, for years that Mediterranean island off the coast of Italy’s mainland has been best known by Americans not for its wine, but for its mafia and its still-active volcano, Mount Etna.
Read more at the Sun-Sentinel.com
It may take a mindshift to think of magnificent Greek ruins in Italy but the Greeks were everywhere a long time before the Romans made something of themselves, and the ancient cities of Akragas and Selinunte on the southern coast of Sicily are equally as dramatic and fascinating as Rome’s Parthenon.
Sicily is like that - surprising and contradictory.
Read more at NZHerald.co.nz
My friend, Franca Calderone, is a professional photographer in Sicily. Here are some beautiful pics of her last trip to Mount Etna. Absolutely gorgeous!
