A Primer on Driving in Sicily: Traffic Signs

Traffic Signs

You may have read my previous post about the "Windsock Warning" sign.  Italian traffic signs can be confusing.  If you are from North America like I am, heads up - our signs are different.  That is, with the exception of the "Stop" sign which actually says "Stop" instead of, oh, I don't know, 'arrestare', 'smettere', 'bloccare', 'fermarsi', 'cessare', anything in Italian.  So, knowing this, you may want to check out Italian traffic signs and their meanings. This link to the Wikipedia page explains them all pretty clearly.  I have to say that, next to the windsock warning sign, my favourite is the exploding car sign.

When I first started driving in Sicily, I followed all the road signs and rules of the road.  That lead to a great deal of honking and rude hand gestures on the part of the drivers with whom I was sharing the road.  The hand signal I saw most often involved slapping the left hand on the inside of the right elbow and the right forearm coming up with the hand clenched into a fist.  So, I started watching.  I discovered that, according to what I was seeing, to Sicilian drivers, traffic signs are just suggestions.

On the right next to the bush are two no parking signs.  Notice the five parked cars.

This is a one way road - notice the blue and white arrowed signs.  Also notice the car pointed down the up-only street AND parked on the sidewalk.

Sometimes the signs are hidden and easily missed.  I really think the Sicilian department of highways likes to mess with our minds.

"Let's just hide this one in the bushes - they'll never see it there!"

In relation to the picture above, speed limit signs also seem to be suggestions.

80 km/h?  Yeah, right.

On the autostrada away from the cities where the the traffic is more spread out, the speed limit becomes less and less a rule to be followed - a maximum speed sign indicating 80 km/h would see cars speeding by at a minimum of 120 km/h.  Minimum.  As in most people are going faster.  At one point on our first trip to Sicily I was keeping up with the traffic on the autostrada to Cefalu'.  I glanced down at my speedometre and I was doing 160 in a 90 zone without even realizing it.  I almost pooped my pants!  I had never driven that fast in my life.

"Oh Crap!  How fast am I going???"

Just another note on speed.  Once you are off the autostrada, in terms of speed, all bets are off.  Sometimes you will see someone driving a little three-wheeled, one person truck that seems to be powered by a hamster on a wheel and will be driving half the speed limit.

I think the hamster sits right above the front wheel!

Sometimes you will have someone in an ordinary little Fiat who will be speeding around 30 km/h corners at 80 or 90.  And then sometimes you will see a car that you expect to be going fast but the driver is moving at the pace of a snail!  Two and a half years ago, in Calabria (same rules apply there), we pulled onto a regional highway behind a Maserati - shiny black, obviously well taken care of.  We fully expected the driver to leave us in his dust.  Instead he was doing about 60 in a 90 zone.  It was one lane each way, constant curves and no way to pass.   So we drove for about 2 hours behind this beautiful Maserati until he finally pulled off.  Two off-ramps later we pulled off and found the side road we were looking for.  We drove for about 20 minutes and who did we see in front of us?  The shiny black Maserati and driving even more slowly!  ARGGHH!  Another 15 minutes behind the Maserati.

So what did I learn?  Now I just drive at the speed that is comfortable for me - no more 160 km/h!

There are some signs that you might chuckle at but you really need to pay attention to.  We came across this sign just outside of Agira.

We had a little giggle about a cow warning sign.  We drove around the corner and this is what we saw.

When the cattle had passed us and we continued on a couple of kilometres down the road and we were in the middle of....

One night we were leaving Capizzi, the hometown of Nick's family.  It was dark and we came around a corner to see...

Horses, cows and a couple of goats all on their own.  I honked and they just looked at me.  I had to weave my way through them before we could continue on our drive back to Nick's cousins' house where we were staying.

A Primer to Driving in Sicily: Picking Up Your Car from the Trapani Airport

The Trapani Airport is by far my favourite Sicilian airport.  If you go to the official website you will see there is no map.  That is because you don't need one.  It is a tiny, tiny airport.  There is no circling waiting for a runway, and when we landed we walked in to no immigration and no customs!  That was a surprise!  This is because it is mainly a domestic airport.  I checked the flights in and out for today.  Eleven flights in, eleven flights out for the whole day and only one in and one out were not domestic.  There are only four airlines that use Trapani: Ryan Air, Darwin Airline, AirOne, and Alitalia.  Ryan Air reports having flights from all over Europe flying into Trapani.  I can't comment on that as we have only flown from Beauvais, just outside of Paris.  Darwin Air and AirOne only fly domestically to Trapani.  Alitalia has connections all over the world so flying into Trapani shouldn't be a problem.

One of the nice things about Trapani is once you pick up your luggage and walk into the main part of the airport, the car rental desks are right in front of you.  Our experience was that there was no English speaking clerk there so Nick was brought into service and did all the negotiations in terms of renting the car.  

We arrived from Canada so walking out into the HOT July heat of Sicily was a shock.  It was also a shock walking to the very far end of the parking lot to pick up our little Ford Fiesta.  

The really nice part of driving out of Trapani Airport is that it is beautiful and there is no traffic to speak of.  This gave me some time to get used to driving in an unfamiliar place until we hit the real traffic.  We were heading to Agrigento so we decided not to take the autostrada, but to take the regional highway to the south.  This turned out to be the best choice as we had some amazing views.

Almost no traffic!  Even the signpost thinks we are going the right way!

This view had us squealing!  You don't see this in Canada!

Again, more Greek architecture that had me drooling!

Not the best picture of our first glimpse of the Mediterranean
but considering we were driving and had nowhere to stop , it's not bad.

We took a side road that went by the Turkish Steps or La Scala dei Turchi.
The houses there were spectacular, as was the view!

A Primer to Driving in Sicily: Picking Up Your Car from the Catania Airport

Last summer, Nick and I landed in the Catania airport for the first time in our travels.  It is a medium-sized airport that we found pretty easy to navigate.  There is a beautiful new terminal, and a quite serviceable old terminal.  However, when you look for the car rental desks inside the airport, no luck.  To find the car rental office you need to walk to the end of the old terminal, walk outside past the bus stops and you will see a little white trailer on your left across the road.  That is the car rental office.  The nice thing about picking up your car in Catania is that the parking lot is directly behind the car rental office.  No long walk, no searching for your car in a huge parking lot.  It was as easy as pie!  Or cosa facile.  

Getting out of the airport was easy as well.  Good signage, clear lanes - easy.  Then you hit Catania.  Oh. My. God.

Catania is a town that Sicilians love to hate.  I heard all kinds of negatives and slanders about Catania from Sicilians all over the island.  However, we found that Catania has its own beauty, albeit a crumbling beauty.  The nightlife is exciting and there is a vibrancy amongst its people that we really appreciated.  Yet just around the corner in Acireale you can find traditional Sicily.

Set up for a midnight jazz concert in Catania

An Acireale fisherman heading out into the bay just as his father, grandfather,
and great grandfather did. 

The roads in Catania are wide for the most part, and easy to drive, with three exceptions:

1. There are one way streets everywhere.  
2. Both streets and lanes merge without warning.
3. The drivers in Catania are CRAZY.

What this means is that you have to keep your eyes open all the time.  You can't let your attention wander ever.  Let me repeat that.  You cannot let your attention wander ever!  And it is extremely helpful to have a navigator to help you figure out where you are going as you drive.  Even with a GPS, it was necessary to have Nick giving me clearer directions because the GPS is not always completely clear.  Because of this, Nick and I have no pictures of driving in Catania to share on the blog as we were too busy just driving to get the camera out.

I wish I could say that getting out of Catania was as easy as Palermo (which is not particularly easy) but it is not.  There are several autostrada to choose from and if you find yourself on the wrong one, you could be heading towards a part of the island that you had no intention of visiting.  

If you take the Viale Mediterraneo you will get to autostrada E45 also known as A18.  North takes you up towards Taormina and Messina and south takes you towards Siracusa (Syracuse) as far as Rosolini.  

To get to the autostrada that will take you west through the centre of the island, you will have to take E932 also known as A19.  This autostrada will take you west as far as Enna and then north to the E90 about halfway between Termini Imerese and Cefalu'.

The traffic as you either leave or enter Catania is busy and impatient.  Be prepared for people cutting in front of you, honking and waving their arms rudely.  Just take it all as part of the Sicilian experience!

Heading to a toll booth into Catania

A Primer to Driving in Sicily: Picking Up Your Car from the Palermo Airport

When you land in Sicily, you most likely will arrive at one of the airports (you can reach Sicily by ferry as well) which will be where you pick up your rental car.

In Sicily there are three airports that take international flights: Palermo, the largest; Catania on the east coast; and Trapani the smallest of the three.

I can't talk much about the Palermo Airport as we haven't yet flown in there yet, but I will tell you what I have heard and do know.

Picking up a rental car in Palermo is fairly easy, especially if you don't speak Italian.  Most car rental desks have English speaking clerks.  It is a bit of a hike to the car rental areas if you have some mobility issues or if it is mid-summer and crazy hot.  Where it gets really interesting is when you leave the airport.  Palermo is full of twists and turns and narrow streets and crazy drivers.  I found this video on Youtube which shows you some of what driving in Palermo can be like.  Warning - they drop a couple of "F-bombs" which is quite understandable considering that they are totally lost.

This is from the miobbi Youtube channel.

Once you manage to find your way out of Palermo, and that is no mean feat, you will find yourself on the autostrada heading, well just about anywhere in Sicily.  That autostrada is called Viale Regione Siciliana or E90.  Depending on which direction you take, you might find yourself in the beautiful Castellammare del Golfo, or you could land in the equally beautiful but touristy Cefalu.  And off the E90 you can take smaller highways to take you to places like Corleone, from The Godfather, or Sperlinga, a tiny town in which people used to live in caves.

Streets of Corleone

Anti-Mafia Museum

Central Bar with the Godfather theme

Entrances to the cave homes in Sperlinga

After climbing the hill with our slightly reluctant guide

Entrance to a cave home

Inside a cave home

If you want to read more about Sperlinga (and it is a fascinating place) I would recommend The Stone Boudoir by Theresa Maggio.  Her book is about the interesting mountain villages that can be found in Sicily.

A Primer to Driving in Sicily: Before You Leave Home

Approaching Catania

It occurred to me last summer, that a primer to driving in Sicily would be a very useful thing, especially since Sicily has a real lack of convenient public transit and renting a car truly is the best way to get the most out of visiting the island.  I thought I would begin with a video by Bruno Bozzetto called Yes and No: Driving in Italy. Short of seeing people's dogs flattened and people killed on the street, I have seen almost everything that he has put into his video.  In fact, I have actually done a couple of the "no"s and several of the "yes"s.





I want to thank Bruno Bozzetto and his daughters Anita and Irene for giving me permission to embed his video on my blog.  He makes great videos and if you want to see more, I suggest you check out his Youtube channel!

I don't pretend to be an expert on driving in Italy.  I have had, now, about 9 weeks of experience driving in Italy - most of which was in Sicily.  When we rent a car, I do all the driving.  It is much cheaper renting a standard shift than an automatic and my darling husband, Nick, is not comfortable with a stick shift, nor does he like driving unfamiliar roads much.  Also, it costs an extra €7 per day to have an extra driver so I play chauffeur.  At some point, once we figure out how to get insurance without being residents, we will buy a car - probably some beat up old Fiat - but for now we rent.

Before You Leave Home

There are a couple of things that you need to know before you leave home.

Our Fiat Panda rental car

International Driving Permit
(in case you couldn't read the picture!)

1. You MUST be at least 18 to drive in Italy.  No ifs ands or buts about it.  
2. If you don't have an EU licence, you need to get an International Driving Permit.  In Canada, you can go to your local Automobile Association (even if you don't have a membership) with your driver's licence and for a minimal fee (in my case it was $25) you can get your IDP.  The IDP provides a translation of your driver's licence into numerous different languages.  It is good for one year.
3. Rent your car through a travel agent at home.  It is cheaper renting it outside of Italy and, more importantly, you get better comprehensive insurance.  Trust me.  I don't care how good or experienced a driver you are.  You might be the stunt driver for Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me (which just happens to take place in Italy) or Jason Statham in Transporter, you still need the best comprehensive insurance possible.  
4. When selecting the type of car, think about the smallest car you can get away with and then get one size smaller.  We had a Fiat Panda last summer.  Very nice little car - peppy, comfortable, easy to drive - but I still wished I had a smaller car.  If you can get away with a smartcar or a Fiat 500 you are better off.
5. You will need sunglasses if you are there in the summer.  Find the coolest possible sunglasses - either designer or believable knock-offs.  In Italy you need to put on the best bella figura (literally: beautiful figure - it's all about making a good impression).
6. Take meditation classes before you leave.  While driving in Sicily can be fun, you are guaranteed to have some heart-stopping moments.  Anything you can do to lower your blood pressure and stress level when those moments happen will do you some good.  "Om mani padme hum".