Our Visit to Sicily was quite an experience.
Syracuse was found easily down on the motorway from Catania. And also the island of Ortigia and the tiny little lane was with the help of Google maps reached directly. Paolo, Valentina's father welcomed us and explained the small apartment and it's technique despite some language problems. He was also very helpful and everything was easily sorted.
The one room apartment in the ground floor of a three storey house gave all wanted amenities and was cleam and complete.
However we might have thought about it a bit more careful when ordering. As the tiny flexous city lane with a total width of less than 9ft is just in front of the only two french windows there is no possibility to sit outside, or even to see the sky from the apartment, well it may be wanted in hot summer days, though. What we found really remarkable was that we shared a, to our feeling, traditional Sicilian way of life: Dark rooms, bad ventilation, slightly damp, and virtually unprotected from the outside world. So it was definitely not a place to have a quiet relaxing holiday, especially when you are used to a rural environment at home.
Really disappointing was a construction side nearly opposite of Valentina's place. They started at 7 or 7:30 in the morning and you had hammering noise until midday. Especially when they used a bob cat to bring the rubble to the next larger lane and drove by about a hundred times, there was no thinking of a long sleep and a late start. We would have wished that we would have been warned as these works were ongoing since June and will go on for much longer by the looks of it. But maybe that is also a part of an experience, when going out to foreign countries!