We went to Mimmo and Alessia’s home in early April being three families of six, four and three- despite our numbers the home is huge and catered for us easily.
The two key things for our visit to Mimmo and Alessia’s home are the house and the hospitality. The house is amazing, with a fantastic location and views north of Mount Etna which are breathtaking. To the south you can see all of Catania and across the plain, simply incredibly picturesque. Nicolosi is also a very peaceful town with very good restaurants and prices that surprised us at how cheap they were. The actual house itself has a tennis court which we used a lot, with a changing room and toilet next to it. Mimmo provided all the racquets and balls we needed and gave us all lessons on our last day which was great fun. All the rooms are nice and styled differently, the external chalets were loved by the kids as it felt like they had their own holiday homes. The pool was used too although it was a bit cold in April weather, so only the crazy guests in our party used it (the kids).
But then the best thing, even better than the home, was the welcome and hospitality of Mimmo and Alessia. We arranged tours of the local town and Etna and Mimmo took us to local places that we would never have found without his help, such as cheese makers and artisans working lava stone.
We also saw Catania with Mimmo who spent all day guiding us, trying lots of local foods. The boat trip in Acitrezzo was really fun too.
Alessia cooked for us all one night a really fantastic meal with lots of wine and chatted with us, she was really friendly.
Mimmo then arranged at th last minute for us cooking lessons at the home with a local chef, making Sicilian traditional dishes.
Mimmo even went as far as to arrange a meeting for me with the local head of tourism who is a historian so he could talk to me about the WW2 Sicily campaign, which was of great nterest to me as my grand father served in Sicily.
Nothing was too much for Mimmo, this was my most enjoyable holiday for a long time! If I get the chance to return I will- our only regret is we should have booked more tennis lessons and tried another tour, maybe next time!