Holiday to Sicily in Apr 2026: Day 2 – Afternoon in Palermo

By Nige on April 14, 2026 at 8:00 pm
Type: Post
Story: Holiday to Sicily in Apr 2026 Category: Travel
Tags: Avis | Holidays | Italy | Mercure | Palermo

Passport control was slow. Unbelievably slow. We were lucky since we were first off the aircraft and were first in the queue at Border Control.

Having handed over our passports, it was clear they were having system issues with the new EU EES. The two officials scanned our passports, took photos of us and took our fingerprints (even though we had both registered previously at other EU airports).

They then had to be guided by another guy who explained how to use the new system.

Eventually, we were allowed through. The short walk through baggage reclaim took very little time and we were out and then in the queue for Avis, which is where the fun began.

I handed over my driving licence and explained that it had expired. My new driving licence was in the post but I had access to my GOV.UK drivers account which showed my new driving licence.

Firmly, but politely, I was told I wasn’t able to hire a car in Italy without a valid physical driving licence. B*gger. The agent asked whether I was with anyone else, which is where Vick had to step forward.

She reluctantly took on the driver role and we headed over to our car. It was a Renault Captur.

The drive into Palermo was challenging but Vick did a sterling job, with lots of encouragement from me, in avoiding the crazy Italian drivers and keeping us heading in the right direction. We even did a loop around the Mercure hotel when we arrived in central Palermo, before dumping the car and asking the hotel to valet park for us.

The hotel were not happy that the BA Holiday booking was for one person, but Vick was with me.

So we had to pay a 25 Euros supplement, together with 30 Euros for parking our car. Our annex room wasn’t quite ready, so we chilled in reception and patiently waited for access to our room.

A short while later, we were shown the way to our room on the 8th floor in another building and we settled in. It was very noisy with a main road and the room was very warm. The whole building was on the same air conditioning system which was set to warm for winter, but would not be set up for air con until May. Therefore the window needed to be open to allow the room to cool.

We popped out to have a brief look around Palermo, where we found a lovely little pedestrian walkway called Via Maccherronai, (on the way to La Vuccinia), which was full of street cafes.

We stopped off to get some lunch., where Vick had a disappointing salad and I had a wonderful pizza.

After further exploring Palermo, we decided it was time to head back to the hotel for a snooze. By this stage it had started raining a little. That turned into a deluge later on in the day.

After doing some planning in our room, we chose a restaurant a very short distance away, which was good for gluten-free pasta. Getting there in the pouring rain was going to be a challenge, so we opted for an Uber for the short journey.

Dinner at Il Culinario was pleasant enough. Vick started off with an aubergine dish which she really enjoyed. I had bruschetta. For main course, Vick went for a tasty spaghetti dish and I had a rigatoni carbonara which was lovely.

Due to the rain, we found a plethora of guys on the streets selling umbrellas! Following our chequered history of street guys selling brollies in Italy, we decided to bite the bullet and pay 10 Euros for a cheap nasty brolly ,which would be enough to get us back to the hotel, but was unlikely to make it to the end of the week without breaking.

The brolly did its job, but the rain continued unabated.

Back in our room, we started more planning on how to cope with the Italian driving that I had assumed I would be doing, and it looked like Vick would now need to contemplate.