Exploring the Island of Sicily, Italy | Tourist Heaven or Hell?

Exploring the Island of Sicily, Italy | Tourist Heaven or Hell?

hey hey hey [Music] this is the very popular island of Sicily Italy heat heat n [Music] [Music] heat heat [Music] buenjouro good morning how’s it going today is Monday June 9th 2025 currently 84° F that is 29° C decided to start this video in the same place as yesterday because I like this really cool uh alley with some great street art much better than the crappy graffiti that you see uh all over the city unfortunately so for those who didn’t see the uh past couple of videos I booked a room here in Katana just a few blocks away for a full week with the intention of exploring the surrounding area including Tower Mina and so I’m going to uh catch a train over there in just a few minutes heading over to the train station bought a uh train ticket yesterday it is about an hour away and so one thing that I’m curious to find out once I get there is am I going to regret having decided to stay for a full week here in Katana and whisp I had stayed a few days in Teramina or maybe the whole time because it’s supposed to be really nice and it is the main uh reason why I wanted to come back to uh see this part of Sicily but it’s also supposed to be very touristy [Applause] it was more expensive than staying here in Katana and a bit more inconvenient as far as getting there straight from the airport and then getting back to the airport to fly out and also to go to Syracuse which is the opposite direction from Katana so staying in Katana was just the uh most convenient uh option for exploring the area and uh good price on the room there so uh let’s do it looking forward to uh seeing this town i brought my swim trunks i’m not sure if there’s a beach there but I think so and so maybe get a swim in today so uh here we go looking forward to seeing uh what is supposed to be one of the most beautiful towns in Sicily Towerina here we go let’s uh catch the train and a little something to enjoy while I walk down to the station a very dripping gelato pistachio again and tone not quite sure what that is but uh it is good all right this is getting out of control and it looks like this must be the train here we go bika Towerina never heard of Bikocha [Music] heat heat [Music] heat heat n [Music] heat [Music] heat [Music] heat heat [Music] [Music] and so this is Towerina here we have some very ancient looking ruins no idea the history of these but uh certainly many many hundreds of years old so the uh train drops you at the nearest station but uh from there it is then a 15-minute or so drive and so I got that uh bus here to the center of the town it is really cute it is not near the uh sea well it is very close but it is not on the sea commune awarina so you can see the sea down there it is quite a long ways down there is a uh tramway of some sort those guys got a pool there that looks like a good uh place to stay if I were to stay in Towerina here so uh at this point I’m feeling like I made the right choice to stay in Katana towerina is definitely looking gorgeous this entire area but it is also very touristy and yet at the same time not quite as happening as Katana which I guess that’s kind of a contradiction but uh Katana has a fair amount of tourists as well but also more of a locals feel more of an actual happening city atmosphere so uh let’s head first for the ancient amphitheater and it looks like getting there will involve seeing a lot of the uh town let’s head through the old arch here all right we have uh a year M D CC V I I 180 08 I guess all right looks like this is basically the entrance into the town and yeah it is super touristy so one of the reasons why I wanted to come here [Music] other than simply because it’s a really beautiful Sicilian town is because of the amphitheater which I’m walking towards right now about a 10-minute walk away from here up the hill I think now I made a factual error in two of my videos christmas there is sign Tatro Antico so in my first video of Katana from just a couple of days ago then I said that Towermina had the largest amphitheater in the ancient world and as I said that I realized wait it can’t be larger than the Colosseum in Rome and so I kind of corrected myself but I just wasn’t sure about that all right let’s take a quick peek inside uh [Music] And so that statement about Towerina’s theater being the largest or one of the largest was based on a previous video in which I had stated that when I was in Greece and visited the ancient theater of Epidaris on the Palpine Peninsula and I didn’t realize my mistake at the time of course yes the coliseum in Rome is the largest ancient Roman or Greek amphitheater or theater of any kind in the ancient world and so I was going on having misunderstood or misread something when I was doing my research for the Epidowaris Theater so I don’t know what I got wrong there but uh as it turns out the Towerina Theater here is nowhere near the largest either Roman or Greek theaters the seating capacity is around 10,000 whereas at Epidaris I think that it was more than 20,000 and there are many other ancient theaters that are larger including in Athens I think it is the Dionysus theater is the largest ancient Greek theater with a capacity of about 25,000 so just want to correct that factual error i just uh read something incorrectly online so uh yeah I am actually really glad that I didn’t decide to stay here for a full week it is just a very different vibe being mostly tourists but uh certainly still very much worth a visit all right let’s uh wander up this lovely shopping street [Music] heat heat heat heat [Music] heat [Music] heat and so here we are the theater is right through here so here we have some Latin and a year there mdcc so 15 17 17 40 4 since the X is before the L l is 50 X is 10 but X before the L subtracts so that’s my best guess is 1744 [Music] all right here it is so if you happen to see my previous video of Epidalis then you can see right away it is not as big but still very very impressive and clearly still being used for performances today such an amazing uh thing that they have been revitalized so the first ancient theater here was constructed by the Greeks and so uh Sicily was Greek as I’ve discussed previously then one of the reasons why I wanted to come back to this part of Sicily because I visited Sicily a couple years ago but uh the other side of the island didn’t make it over here and so when I was in Turkey a few years ago then I bought this fake coin which turned out to be a Syracuseian decad deca is 10 in Greek dramma was the old currency although not that old it was in use when I came to Greece for the first time in 1990 they were still using the dramma after thousands of years and so Sicily was populated by the Greeks in around the 8th century BC and then in around the 3rd 2nd 1st century BC then the Roman Empire the Roman Republic was the first phase right republic and then into empire and so the Roman Republic was uh rising and conquering uh Greek uh territory and so eventually this became Roman look at that Mount Etna what a view and so that kind of speaks to a subject of when does Greek civilization starts and I’ve discussed this previously and it is definitely a uh point of debate wow and oh man so speaking of Greek right down there you can see Knakos that city there and of course Knos is a Greek island knos Sicily was the first established Greek town here i guess going back to that 8th century BC period so the train went uh right by there and then the station is I think right down there so when do you say was the start of the Greek civilization because it’s not as if the uh Greeks conquered some other people that were there at some point well yes that did happen including here in Sicily there were other people before the Greeks arrived so [Applause] they did do their fair share of conquering but uh in other areas including modernday Greece then the civilization goes back thousands and thousands of years and so there wasn’t a specific point at which the Greeks came in from somewhere else and uh conquered the people that were air and so uh the issue then is at what point do you call them Greeks basically and so that period around the 8th and 7th centuries BC is an important point at which what we call Greek civilization was really being developed including the language and their establishment in many places including here that would then be Greek for many centuries and millennia up until the present day of course so basically there’s no specific answer you can give as far as an exact date well when did the Greek civilization really begin or even what century but uh that time frame of around 700 BC was a very important point at which the uh Greek civilization was developing into what it would become later during the classical period of Greece etc all right look at this view man so what are we looking at over there is that Sicily or the mainland intense view look at that big long beach down there and there’s a really pretty one down there that I was seeing from the bus i think that must be the Italian mainland the heel of the boot I guess it would be this whole area is just stunningly gorgeous so yes that is the Italian mainland out there but I got it backwards it is not the heel of the boot it is the point of the boot so the boot is kicking Sicily and that is a part of Italy that I haven’t been to yet which looks like it has a lot of incredible places to see oh I can see the uh tram going down there the cable car i have been to the heel on a road trip back in 2022 that is when I got my Italian parking ticket the day that I was flying to Albania and then it was a massive pain in the butt to deal with but uh man I’m definitely going to have to think about maybe staying longer in this uh part of Sicily there is the city of Messina up at the uh end of the coast up there right near where there is the very narrow channel between Sicily and the mainland and it’s supposed to be an interesting city and then there are those islands a little archipelago just uh north of Sicily which look really nice and I’ve wanted to see those so uh I’m going to have to make some choices do I want to do more Mediterranean islands beaches etc or something different and head for the mountains especially the Tatris Mountains of Poland and Slovakia which I really want to see so we’ll have to make up my mind soon i just have another 3 days at my place in Katana okay let’s uh head down into town explore a little bit more and then I might go ahead and take that cable car down to that uh beach definitely in the mood for a swim it is heating up i don’t understand that car is so cute guess that lady just rented it the three-legged woman symbol of Sicilia €50 for that public gardens let’s go take a look at that [Music] [Music] so I just withdrew €400 from that evil Euronet ATM i know I’m a broken record on this but decline conversion decline conversion decline conversion and then it isn’t so bad so if I had accepted the conversion then for my €400 I would have been charged out of my bank account $533 US they would have converted the currency and I would have then subtracted $533 if you check on exe.com €400 equals $455 so 533 or 455 my bank will do the conversion and charge approximately the same as what is listed on xie.com in other words they were going to charge me 78 bucks $78 to withdraw cash it is just such a scam it actually says right there 15% markup just insane so I declined and then I was charged €4.95 5 bucks sounds better to me than 78 decline conversion decline conversion decline conversion don’t fall for the scam you can pay for a hotel room with your 78 bucks really pretty streets here so apparently Tamina has been a tourist destination since the 1800s after the unification of Italy villa Communal the theater there is the cable car going down florence Travellian and the Victorian follys the public gardens of Tormina as we know them are one of the most loved and visited sites of the town and were once part of the vast property of Florence Travalian Catiola she was a nature lover always surrounded by her dogs and many other animals that she would lovingly take care of at the end of the 1800s Florence had chosen Towerina as the place in which to spend the rest of her days the eenth victim of Towerina’s charm can’t blame her florence wanted to live her life in symphony with the surrounding nature and her last will stated that her numerous animals should be taken care of in particular her parrots peacocks crows pigeons and canaries together with her husband she built a large house with 50 rooms a short distance from Grand Hotel Timo which I saw it was up near the uh theater and she possessed numerous properties in Tamina and its surroundings including Isola Bella that is where the beach is all right it looks absolutely gorgeous wow [Music] look at the uh style of construction it’s just exquisite or something this is without a doubt one of the most beautiful parts of Italy and that is really saying something because Italy has a lot of beautiful arts not just Tamina the town here but the uh views from the uh train were really beautiful katana is definitely a much uh kind of grittier and uh messier city being a larger city still also quite uh nice but has some really uh rough and derelct neighborhoods but seems like just everywhere around here is gorgeous look at this building [Music] heat heat [Music] [Applause] heat heat [Music] [Applause] [Music] heat heat [Music] heat [Music] [Music] heat [Music] heat heat [Music] hello hello come on [Music] good thing I was walking behind you you know I can’t imagine how much time it took to do that she’s crazy what do they foreignia [Music] [Music] cable car towerina up there you can see the castle that I saw previously and the cables so that is a great way to go it cost €6 about $7 and took literally like 3 or 4 minutes to get down here so uh we are at the water you can see a little crowded beach there i’m guessing they’re all going to be crowded another one of these tunnels to the beach there and then Isola Bella is this way that is the more famous beachella a rock beach [Music] nice looking water very [Music] crowded holy moly this is crazy [Music] [Music] hello still [Applause] [Music] got [Music] heat [Music] so at the uh gardens I think it said the lady owned this little island as well and so I guess those were her [Music] homes or whatever they are as well all right time to uh take the sandals off wander over there oh man that water feels so nice so I wonder if you can go all the way up there [Music] [Music] it is really an absolutely phenomenal scene here if you just removed about 90% of the people just got to come in low season i bet it wasn’t like this in the middle of May and it was probably still fairly warm [Music] [Applause] so €6 ticket to go inside here it’s really really interesting [Applause] [Music] [Music] so what was this a pool I guess wow if so that is quite a location for a swimming pool and it gets nice and deep [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] right on what a uh just amazing day of exploring incredible Sicily super touristy but for good reason [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] heat heat [Music] heat heat [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign speech foreign speech foreign speech [Music] [Music] yeah like All right guys well I think that I’m going to call this my swim it is getting late in the afternoon i am wiped out and uh have a ways to go to get back to Katana so I’m going to uh save my energy for that plus the fact that it is such a crazy crowded beach not really my uh kind of a seat so uh there you go one day on Sicily Island Italy it is incredible it is super touristy i mean this is early June come back in July and August and see what it’s like it’s going to be a lot more crowded but uh for good reason so uh more coming from Italy see you shopping okay [Music]

One day on the island of Sicily, Italy, in which I travel from the city of Catania on the eastern side of the island to the beautiful but very popular town of Taormina.
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Music during the video (in order):

“The New King” by Quincas Moreira
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“Memory Card Full” by Birocratic
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“Heartache” by Silent Partner
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“Driving My Vespa” by Magnus Ringblom
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“Cappuccino Foam” by Trabant 33
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“Boneyard Dance” by Jon Algar
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“Tutto Bene” by Trabant 33
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“The Rise-Up” by Isaac Charles
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“Aurora Currents” by Asher Fulero

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Video created by Gabriel Morris, who is the owner of all video or photo content. Filmed with a DJI Osmo Action: https://amzn.to/3gSi8rA

Gabriel is a budget traveler, outdoors enthusiast and travel writer who has been adventuring around the world since his first trip to Europe in the summer of 1990 when he was 18 years old. He is author of “Following My Thumb”, “Gabe’s Guide to Budget Travel” and several other books.

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