Feedback on "Sicily Life" or any other Taormina guide needed

[CAC104]

daiseee....Thanks for your report. I was considering the Godfather tour because I have already been to Taormina, but I think I will pass on that tour now. I may just try to wander around Messina and see what there is in that town.

[JPH814]

Daisee:

 

Sorry for the negatives about the tout. May I ask: how was the tour itself? What was on the itinerary and was it worth seeing?

[State fans]

I received a cancellation confirmation from Sebastiano within a few days of the request.

[flycatcher06]

This thread is scaring me - I have booked this over 1 year ago for us and some people on our cruise - Anyone who has used them recently please report back. We are going in October on the Liberty. We once had a bad tour guide in Costa Rica and it made for a terrible day - I really would like to avoid that experience again! Thanks - please anyone who has gone let us know. He seems so personable on the e-mail. Thank you!

[CAC104]

Flycatcher...you wrote: We are going in October on the Liberty.

 

Which sailing in Oct. are you on? I will be on the one leaving the 22nd.

[flycatcher06]

Hi there, We are on the October 10th sailing!

[Bob7]

This thread is scaring me - I have booked this over 1 year ago for us and some people on our cruise - Anyone who has used them recently please report back. We are going in October on the Liberty. We once had a bad tour guide in Costa Rica and it made for a terrible day - I really would like to avoid that experience again! Thanks - please anyone who has gone let us know. He seems so personable on the e-mail. Thank you!

Member SueZCruiser is going to report back to us about her Sicily Life tour, her cruise ends June 24. So far we've collected 3 S.L. drivers names who spoke no English: Diego, Maurizio, and Giuseppe. They were late picking up one week but we haven't heard if this happens often. Member CruisingOnceAgain leaves June 24 and is also going to report back, so we should have some feedback soon.

-Bob

[skillz]

FYI, the website for Sicily Tours (Douglas Kenning) is http://www.sicily-tour.com/

 

I recently got a quote from them, however they seem to charge for each item separately (not a fixed cost). For example they charge for vehicle + driver guide + tolls + gas + lunch + entrance.

 

Anyways, for those interested, they can contact Douglas or Lucia directly.

[bunduo]

We, too, booked Sicily Life before the bad reviews started coming in. We changed our reservation to 'Taormina only' which dropped the price to 220 Euro for 4/6 people.

 

We were some of the first people off the ship. Our driver, Luka, was there waiting for us with a sign in hand. He was on time for the pick up in Taormina, too. He was a good driver and nice kid. I'm sure you could negotiate a similar or better rate when you get off the boat. We chose to keep the reservation for peace of mind of knowing we had something lined up.

 

Hopefully, this will ease some people's minds a little. Taormina is a really cool town and fun to walk around. Get there early before the ship tours arrive! We had the Greek theatre to ourselves. It was great! :)

[Bob7]

Bunduo, thx for the update! We got quoted 220E for 4, 260E for 6 for Taormina only. Was Luka's English adequate? Was it a fairly new van? What time did you leave T?

-Bob

[bunduo]

Bunduo, thx for the update! We got quoted 220E for 4, 260E for 6 for Taormina only. Was Luka's English adequate? Was it a fairly new van? What time did you leave T?

-Bob

 

Bob,

 

Luka spoke decent English. Was it perfect? No, but he could be understood and he spoke as well as the other guides we had in Naples, Rome, and Florence. Sure, you have to do some deciphering but it also serves as a reminder that you are in a foreign country.

 

The van was new. We left Taormina at 330pm which was more than enough time to explore. Make sure to walk down to the Villa Communale (public gardens). They are spectacularly beautiful with an awesome view of the sea.

 

If you have never driven in a foreign country, then you will be in for a treat. In other parts of the world, lanes, speed limits, and traffic signals are just suggestions. It's no different in Italy. Luka, however, drove much more American-style.

 

-Matt

[cruisingmimi]

We took a tour w/ Sicily Life this past October. We had 16 cruisemates from the Galaxy on the tour. We did have an excellent day! Our guide spoke excellent English and was very accommodating as far as showing us all the sights, etc. Our day ended in Taormina and everyone loved the visit there.

 

The guide did have a suggested place for us to have lunch but several of us found another restaurant along the main street that we ate in.

 

With that said and done, there seems to be a lot of controversary over the Sicily Life Tours. We had a good one! I had a friend that booked them based upon our group using them and she had a horrible tour!

 

I just found this tour company on another travel board that you might want to check out if anyone is having misgivings about booking w/ Sicily Life. There is nothing worse than a horrible tour!

 

http://www.ladolcevitatours.com/cruiseship6.html

 

I am sure that they would meet the passengers wherever the ship is docked!

 

Good luck.

 

Mary

[Bob7]

Mary thx for the info! Do you remember your driver's name? Did he act as just a driver or as a guide too?

[cruisingmimi]

I am sorry but I don't remember his name. I will try to find out for you. Another fellow cruiser organized this tour w/ Sicily Life and there were 15 of us that signed up for the all-day tour. We expected 2 vans at the dock but instead had a large bus! Don't know why, maybe everything else was all booked. Needless to say, we had plenty of "leg room" and then some to spread out. There was a bus driver and our tour guide. He did speak excellent English and also very knowledgeable. We went to visit the area they filmed the Godfather first. We had a lot of laughs w/ the twisting and turning of the bus around those hilly curves. Spectacular scenery. It was drizzly the day we went. After our Godfather visit we went to Taormina. It was drop dread gorgeous there! We all loved it. You can walk to the Greek Theatre (we didn't but others in the group did). We had lunch in a small little restaurant right on the main street. They didn't speak a word of English but oh, was that food good! We then visited some of the boutique shops along the pedestrian-only mall. Taormina is very upscale. Lots of sidewalk cafes where you can sit and have a glass of wine and people watch.

 

I would have to say our day was excellent.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Mary

[Bob7]

Originally Posted by suezcruise:

We have booked a tour with Sicily Life for our June 12 Carnival Liberty cruise.

Will post review upon returning home.

Cio

Sue Z.

SueZ are you back? How did the S.L. tour go? Did your driver speak some English? Was he on time? Thx!

-Bob

[JPH814]

Bob:

Give her a chance...she is probably still unpacking!

[dmklx582]

SueZ are you back? How did the S.L. tour go? Did your driver speak some English? Was he on time? Thx!

-Bob

 

Ron here; we were on the May 31st Liberty sailing and used sicilylife.com for a day's trip to Taormina. Driver was puctual and very polite and responsive to our wishes. His English wasn't perfect but we communicated easily. Made arrangements with Sebastiano and drivers name was Antonio. We were with him about 6 hours and loved Taormina. Hope this helps

[CAC104]

I sent e-mails to both Sicily Life and Sicily Tours requesting if they were free on the day I would be in Messina. That was last week, and I still have not heard back....How long did the initial contact take you to book your day?

[Bob7]

Ron, thx for the feedback, much appreciated.

 

Carol, Sebastiano was quite prompt at replying. The email was: info at sicilylife dot com. Another cruiser thinks an associate may do his general emails, b/c when some heavy details needed attention from him the style of writing (use of English) was quite different. He quoted 220E for 4 ppl, 260E for 6ppl, 290E for 8 ppl for a day at Taormina.

-Bob

[CAC104]

Thanks for the rate quotes...

 

When they take you to Taormina, do they park the car and then walk around with you, or does this include just the ride there and they wait for you to come back at the end of the day?

[Smooth Sailing]

This is just a warning - If anyone is considering using or booked with "Sicily Tours" with Stephen - beware - We had the worst tour of our lives with this tour company - total confusion - no communication - no direction. Stephan can be very arrogant and nasty if problems occur. If you chose to still use Sicily Tours - just remember - I told you so - Stephan is very unprofessional.

[missyal]

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience.:( Can you elaborate on the problems? What type of tour did you hire him for? We all learn from these things so I really appreciate the post and info.

 

Missyal

[SleevesEnd]

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience.:( Can you elaborate on the problems? What type of tour did you hire him for? We all learn from these things so I really appreciate the post and info.

 

Missyal

 

I was on Dave's tour ... actually, after careful research I was the one who booked the tour. Here's what I wrote on our roll call board about Sicily Tour. I'm also going to post my review of all the drivers (all the others were great) we used, here on the destination board so this portion will be repeated.

 

Sicily: We used Sicily Tour and this was our only sour spot ... really sour. We had two vans reserved. One group, lead by Annie with 7 passengers (her family) and our bus of 13 (6 Cruise Critic members and their families). I believe we were supposed to have Douglas as our "host" and a driver, Annie in the smaller van had Stephen as host and driver, he's also an owner. When they met us as the port a woman was holding the sign with our name. She was very nice, spoke perfect English with a British accent (she was raised in Oxford) and mentioned that this was her first day as a tour guide. This was disappointing but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and prepared for another wonderful tour.

 

The plan was to do Mt. Etna, Taromina and possibly some of the Godfather villages. Well we started off going to the Godfather filming site, Bar Vitelli, a charming little site but on the way the "host" said nothing, not pointing anything out, not telling us exactly where we're going, she tried to answer things she was asked, but didn't know some basic things like what body of water we were passing. She spent the time making up name tags for us. We met up with Stephen and Annie's group at Bar Vitelli and I asked Annie if he was talking during the drive and she said yes so I asked Stephen to ask our "host" to please talk more and point things out. He said he would. At this point I envisioned this woman just starting out in her new career as a tour guide and I gave here the benefit of the doubt.

 

On the way to Etna she talked a bit more pointing out maybe 3 things in the 45 minute drive to Mt. Etna. Nothing about the lava, nor the wildlife, nor about how high we were, etc. She did recall the last eruption, but not much else. And I could barely hear her even when she did speak (I was in the back, the fourth row). At Etna I spoke to Stephen again and he just said "What do you want to know?" What I wanted was our guide to talk during our drive!

 

In Taromina (again, no insight during the drive) we had some time before we needed to meet at the restaurant (not sure how much time, but not a lot) Unlike other tours, we had menus and ordered what we wanted. I thought I would prefer ordering myself to the family style food we had on previous tours ... although all the food and service was wonderful, perfect, on those tours, I had wondered why we did it that way ... but now I see the advantage of the pre-ordered family style ... time. The drivers had called and said when we'd be there and the delicious food was brought out as soon as we sat down. Here, we were seated next to Stephen and Annie's group and were handed menus and we ordered.

 

The restaurant was clearly not set up for such a large group all at once and most of us were all done before 3 people in my group even got their food! Stephen saw this, told us we had to hurry and practically ran out the door with Annie's group, leaving our group to continue to wait for food. It was around this point I found out the real story, our original guide had a family emergency and couldn't make our tour and this (very nice, but not a tour guide) woman was a friend of Stephens and was "doing him a favor" and had never done this before, nor was she trained to. I was fuming ... why didn't Stephen tell us this to start with? We finally HAD to leave, but still no food for 3 of us and as we got up the food arrived and the restaurant was going to make us pay for it! To avoid a scene our poor "host" took the manager aside and paid with her own credit card ... I'm assuming she will be repaid by Stephen, but (now knowing how he is) who knows! I will say, my food was wonderful I just felt bad for those that didn't eat.

 

Anyway, it wasn't clear which way to to or where we had to be so we ended up standing at the end of the street for 30 minutes while the other group finished up at Teatro Greco (which they only saw for 5 minutes).

 

Finally back at the port I spoke to Stephen and said I thought we deserved a reduction due to the lack of a guide (we had tipped the woman 65 Euro and paid for her lunch ... she kept trying to return the tip but we felt she tried to make the best of what she obviously was talked into doing ... she felt really bad and upset about the whole thing). Stephen was awful to me, saying we were promised a "host" not a guide, he didn't care if he got a bad review (or six I guess) on Cruise Critic, he doesn't need Cruise Critic, he has hundreds of wonderful reviews, blah, blah, blah. Very unprofessional, as business owner he should be ashamed. He said (as we stood in front of the ship) "ask me know anything you want to know about Mt. Etna", etc. He even told me he was paying her just 150 Euro for the day and she had to get up at 4:00 am and wouldn't get home until 8:00 pm to do this tour ... I said I don't know why it was our problem he used someone who lived 3 hours from the port and he said who what I supposed to use? Someone from here (as he swept his arms out towards the port)? He asked, was he supposed to tell his partner he couldn't be with his dying mother? No Stephen, you're supposed to greet me at the port, shake my hand, explain the situation and offer me a discount right off the bat ... in other words, act like a professional business owner who cares about his reputation and his clients.

 

I don't know how it will end up, he has my credit card from when I contracted him ... I'll keep you posted. My advice, stay away from them. My understanding he is a good tour guide or "host" ... Annie said he was informative during their drive but our dissatisfaction was distracting towards the end ... we were paying the same per person for a very different tour quality. He's a bad business man and wasn't upfront with us.

 

In the future, for Sicily I'd do a Taromina on your own tour ... or another city. As tempting as visiting a volcano might be if you've never been on one, it's a long drive there and back for not much while you're there.

[Capsu78]

Food for thought for those of you figuring out what do in Sicily. We visited for a week in 2004 on our first European excursion.

We started in Rome, and found that nearly 50% of the Romans we came in contact with had good conversational english skills, and about 85% had some basic communications (IE their broken english was better than my non existant Italian - I know, shame on us Americans, and I admit to being embarrased by not knowing more).

Anyway, after a couple of days in Rome, I knew we had the language thing made in the shade. Just say "English, Please?" and someone was their to bale you out!

Then, we fly to Sicily and reality hit home! My best guess is that about 1 in 10 had conversational english skills, maybe 3 in 10 had some basics, The funny thing was that they were very freindly people, and always offered to help us... Its just that sometimes they felt that if they kept speaking Italian to us, sooner or later we would magically begin to speak Italian!

My point is in Rome, the cities, and in the north, you are more apt to find English speakers. Sicily and in the countryside, less prone to.

[Smooth Sailing]

I was on Dave's tour ... actually, after careful research I was the one who booked the tour. Here's what I wrote on our roll call board about Sicily Tour. I'm also going to post my review of all the drivers (all the others were great) we used, here on the destination board so this portion will be repeated.

 

Sicily: We used Sicily Tour and this was our only sour spot ... really sour. We had two vans reserved. One group, lead by Annie with 7 passengers (her family) and our bus of 13 (6 Cruise Critic members and their families). I believe we were supposed to have Douglas as our "host" and a driver, Annie in the smaller van had Stephen as host and driver, he's also an owner. When they met us as the port a woman was holding the sign with our name. She was very nice, spoke perfect English with a British accent (she was raised in Oxford) and mentioned that this was her first day as a tour guide. This was disappointing but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and prepared for another wonderful tour.

 

The plan was to do Mt. Etna, Taromina and possibly some of the Godfather villages. Well we started off going to the Godfather filming site, Bar Vitelli, a charming little site but on the way the "host" said nothing, not pointing anything out, not telling us exactly where we're going, she tried to answer things she was asked, but didn't know some basic things like what body of water we were passing. She spent the time making up name tags for us. We met up with Stephen and Annie's group at Bar Vitelli and I asked Annie if he was talking during the drive and she said yes so I asked Stephen to ask our "host" to please talk more and point things out. He said he would. At this point I envisioned this woman just starting out in her new career as a tour guide and I gave here the benefit of the doubt.

 

On the way to Etna she talked a bit more pointing out maybe 3 things in the 45 minute drive to Mt. Etna. Nothing about the lava, nor the wildlife, nor about how high we were, etc. She did recall the last eruption, but not much else. And I could barely hear her even when she did speak (I was in the back, the fourth row). At Etna I spoke to Stephen again and he just said "What do you want to know?" What I wanted was our guide to talk during our drive!

 

In Taromina (again, no insight during the drive) we had some time before we needed to meet at the restaurant (not sure how much time, but not a lot) Unlike other tours, we had menus and ordered what we wanted. I thought I would prefer ordering myself to the family style food we had on previous tours ... although all the food and service was wonderful, perfect, on those tours, I had wondered why we did it that way ... but now I see the advantage of the pre-ordered family style ... time. The drivers had called and said when we'd be there and the delicious food was brought out as soon as we sat down. Here, we were seated next to Stephen and Annie's group and were handed menus and we ordered.

 

The restaurant was clearly not set up for such a large group all at once and most of us were all done before 3 people in my group even got their food! Stephen saw this, told us we had to hurry and practically ran out the door with Annie's group, leaving our group to continue to wait for food. It was around this point I found out the real story, our original guide had a family emergency and couldn't make our tour and this (very nice, but not a tour guide) woman was a friend of Stephens and was "doing him a favor" and had never done this before, nor was she trained to. I was fuming ... why didn't Stephen tell us this to start with? We finally HAD to leave, but still no food for 3 of us and as we got up the food arrived and the restaurant was going to make us pay for it! To avoid a scene our poor "host" took the manager aside and paid with her own credit card ... I'm assuming she will be repaid by Stephen, but (now knowing how he is) who knows! I will say, my food was wonderful I just felt bad for those that didn't eat.

 

Anyway, it wasn't clear which way to to or where we had to be so we ended up standing at the end of the street for 30 minutes while the other group finished up at Teatro Greco (which they only saw for 5 minutes).

 

Finally back at the port I spoke to Stephen and said I thought we deserved a reduction due to the lack of a guide (we had tipped the woman 65 Euro and paid for her lunch ... she kept trying to return the tip but we felt she tried to make the best of what she obviously was talked into doing ... she felt really bad and upset about the whole thing). Stephen was awful to me, saying we were promised a "host" not a guide, he didn't care if he got a bad review (or six I guess) on Cruise Critic, he doesn't need Cruise Critic, he has hundreds of wonderful reviews, blah, blah, blah. Very unprofessional, as business owner he should be ashamed. He said (as we stood in front of the ship) "ask me know anything you want to know about Mt. Etna", etc. He even told me he was paying her just 150 Euro for the day and she had to get up at 4:00 am and wouldn't get home until 8:00 pm to do this tour ... I said I don't know why it was our problem he used someone who lived 3 hours from the port and he said who what I supposed to use? Someone from here (as he swept his arms out towards the port)? He asked, was he supposed to tell his partner he couldn't be with his dying mother? No Stephen, you're supposed to greet me at the port, shake my hand, explain the situation and offer me a discount right off the bat ... in other words, act like a professional business owner who cares about his reputation and his clients.

 

I don't know how it will end up, he has my credit card from when I contracted him ... I'll keep you posted. My advice, stay away from them. My understanding he is a good tour guide or "host" ... Annie said he was informative during their drive but our dissatisfaction was distracting towards the end ... we were paying the same per person for a very different tour quality. He's a bad business man and wasn't upfront with us.

 

In the future, for Sicily I'd do a Taromina on your own tour ... or another city. As tempting as visiting a volcano might be if you've never been on one, it's a long drive there and back for not much while you're there.

Thanks Mary - You can say it alot better than I can - and your nicer than I am.