Sicily Tour

Who We Are

Sicily Tour S.A.S. is a licensed Italian tour-guiding company dedicated to intellectually challenging tours and cultural exchange between Italy and English-speaking peoples. We are Stephen and Lucia Davies, and Douglas Kenning. We also are Angela, Patti, Damiano, and others delighted to introduce you to Sicily.

professional, licensed tours

Stephen, Douglas, and Lucia are your hosts, tour leaders, and overall Sicily wizards. In addition, we will be accompanied at sites by a licensed professional guide whom we have chosen ourselves as among the best for each particular site.

Throughout your tour, your leader--Douglas, Stephen, or Lucia--will provide background and expansive overviews, other in-depth information and understandings, and personal perspectives, relevant though sometimes irreverent. See below for more about our individual qualities and expertise.

And often enough, as we roll across the island, our savvy van driver (often our much-beloved Maurizio) will let drop a Sicilian working man's point of view on whatever the topic might be. So you'll get multiple layers of Sicilian expertise for the price of one.

Douglas received his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh and has taught in Scotland, Tunisia, and Japan, before coming to his ancestral island to live in the echoes of ancient Siracusa. In addition to his historical and mythologic tours of Sicily, for half of each year he gives lecture series on the histories and cultures of Sicily and Italy, on Greek Myth and Drama, and on other ancient Mediterranean peoples and their histories, at lecture series in the San Francisco Bay area.

Stephen began as an antique furniture dealer in London, then brought his expertise in craft and design to Sicily forty years ago. Our chief tour leader, no one has more insight into the depth of life here, nor a richer and warmer sense of the good life in Sicily than Stephen, from out-of-the-way restaurants to the best stories of Sicilian life, past and present. 

Lucia effectively runs Sicily Tour—our organizer, planner, and memory, carrying us all on a tide of clear thinking, organizational brilliance, deep knowledge of how Sicily really works, and good cheer. Of Siracusan stock–she's named for our patron saint–Lucia knows everyone and is loved by everyone.

OUR BUSINESS HISTORY

As individuals, we have been hosting visitors--individuals, couples, groups, school kids, university students, etc. for 40 years. Sicily Tour, first as a cultural exchange company then as a licensed tour operation, has been in existence formally for 19 years. 

OUR STYLE

Besides the incredible history, deep mythic resonances, and beauty of Sicily, we also came here for "la dolce vita" – the good life. We know the best hidden local restaurants (Stephen is your man), the little shops that sell just what you're looking for (Lucia's special skill), the best countryside for driving and picnics, just where that Greek hero met that goddess (Douglas' specialty), and back roads that the tour books have never found. (By the way, once you've lived somewhere, you realize how the writers of those guide books you buy so often just skim the surface). With native Italian and Sicilian fluency (Stephen and Lucia, I mean, Douglas still struggles somewhat) and over a third of a century of exploring every corner of the island, we'll take you all of the most famous sites on the island and others rarely visited (a few known only to us). Or you can just sit at a cafe in the old town and while away the hours enjoying the Sicilian pace of life.  

What We Will Do for You

We can do it all, make all the arrangements in Sicily: pick you up on arrival, drive  you to the best historical sites, scenery, culture, hotels, shops, and restaurants all across Sicily, and return you to the airport.  

Or you can do some of that yourself, if you like, and we'll pick up the slack. You just let us know.

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