Sicily Day 1 The Journey and Arrival
We began the day with Monica driving up from Virginia, and from there we went straight to Newark. Everything went smooth and we arrived in Sicily with zero problems, which was awesome, considering last time when we were in Italy, I booked our rental at one airport, but went to the other……epic. Thankfully Palermo only had one airport which made that easier. Just to note they fixed it easily for me last time, upgraded my car and gave me a discount despite my mistake just because of how things worked out, nothing of my own doing.
Our lay over in Munich was pretty sweet as we did a Bavarian breakfast, and shared a beer since that’s what everyone talks about as an experience. I was a bit fascinated to see one of the workers drinking a beer like it was water at 8 a.m. in the morning their time. We had a pretty nice breakfast with pretzel’s, a meatloaf which was more like a very nice Bologna, sausage, eggs, and some nice rolls. It was really good for an airport. From here we went to our gate, caught our flight and went to Palermo, we were very tired. While our flight from the United was great thanks to a great experience with a couple of great United employees, we were exhausted since we essentially slept 4 hours apiece at best.
Day 1 essentially was just traveling, and I just would like to highlight early on for encouraging travel for anyone on a budget. To begin, I was asked by my mom to book this trip on her behalf. She offered to pay my way to be her guide, due to my travels in many different respects. In addition my fiance decided to join after our amazing trip to Italy last year, that we accomplished on a budget of $3000 for airfare, hotels and car rental. Sicily’s budget was $4000 due to logistics. I managed to pull that off, but at the last second my mother had to cancel due to a broken foot. Thankfully the way I set things up, I was able to cancel all of my mother’s rooms, in addition since I used my United card, and some persistent words, they reimbursed the airline ticket, which initially was only going to be a limited credit since we had not gotten insurance. Sometimes the cards you use like American Express or an airline will bail you out of a last second of bad news.
To close, after my mothers refund, the trip ended up costing $2400 for Monica and I, which is still a bargain for 10 days of rooms, airfare and 9 days of car rental. We booked budget seats, but thanks to my United card, again we not only racked up a bunch of points for a future trip, we also got complimentary lounge passes. This perk helped us with good seats on our flight. The woman at the lounge put us by the emergency exit due to my height, in addition she booked our seats for the next flight, which saved us from exiting the main area when we arrived in Munich. This can be a hassle as we learned in our trip to Italy, when you have to recheck yourself with security. Finally our flight attendant David, who sat in front of us was very personable and truly made the main part of our journey a delight.
Additional Photos can be found here
