Traveling to Sicily was one of the worst trips of my entire life. It may have been a nightmare, but the beautiful views made up for it in the end…sort of. 

This past July, my younger sister and I began our trip in Virginia Beach, driving 45 minutes to the Norfolk airport. From there we flew to JFK, which is known as the worst airport in America when it comes to delays. The plane ride wasn’t too bad, aside from the British guy who sat next to us and kept demanding the flight attendant bring him a beer. Our next plane departed from JFK and we flew 10 hours to Prague, Czechia. I sat between a man and his teenage son, who kept falling asleep on my tray table. 

My sister took this photo when her BeReal notification went off on the plane. The British guy asked to be in it and she let him.

After arriving in Prague, we gathered our suitcases and took an Uber to a train station. It took two train rides totaling about 10 hours to get to a small town called Spišská Nová Ves in Slovakia. Typically that trip would have taken 8 hours, but in the middle of the night the train broke down and we were stuck on the tracks until a repair crew arrived to fix the train. We spent a couple nights in Slovakia with some family who were going to be traveling the rest of the way with my sister and I.

After our break from the long days of traveling, we got on a train and traveled two hours to Košice, and a plane there took us to Catania, located in Sicily, Italy. Finally, we took the strangest taxi ride to the edge of the neighborhood we were staying in. This man was swerving, puffing on a cigarette, and talking loudly to himself while making absolutely no sense.

My parents, three sisters and I arrived at the AirBnB in the middle of the night, only to find that the place my Uncle had booked for us had only two bedrooms, one tiny bathroom, no air conditioning, and had an ant infestation. The amount of effort it had taken to get here left me in tears when I saw the state of the house we were staying in for the next seven days. As my family settled in as best they could, I laid on a tiny bed wondering if I was even going to make it back home.

The next morning, my parents told us we were taking a hike to go to the beach. This sounds fun for most people, but for someone as pale as I am and who hates the feeling of sand on her skin, this sounded like a death sentence. I would have rather done anything else, but I decided to suck it up and go for my family’s sake.

It felt like a million degrees outside that day. The water was cool and refreshing which was a relief.

What I saw on that hike were some of the most gorgeous views I had ever seen. Overall, I don’t regret going on that trip but I definitely will not be making that trip again in the near future.

This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. The water looked amazing and I loved looking at the town in the distance.