Rocca Delle Tre Contrade, Sicily

If you’re trying to figure out a spring/summer/fall getaway with a group of friends or family, I can’t recommend Tre Contrade in Sicily enough. It’s 30 minutes north of the Catania airport, 30 minutes south of Taormina (easy to get to and lots to do for all types of interests in the vicinity), and quite big (12 bedrooms), so it was the perfect place to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday with our extended family and friends. Besides being just stunning inside and out, it’s fully staffed—meaning, very few triggers (food shopping, cleaning up, setting table, cooking, paying, laundry, making beds, serving drinks)—and everyone just relaxes! On top of that, the food is beyond. I think we can all agree that the food we actually want to eat is the food an amazing Italian nonna would make…and that is exactly what their chef Dora cooks! Some personal highlights were the daily breakfast granita (every day a different flavor—almond, mulberry, coffee, strawberry), the pure lemon juice (the property is surrounded by lemon groves) that we added to sparkling water (perfect to detox from the copious amounts of limoncello the night before), the vitello tonnato at lunch, the fried sardines at aperitivo, and really, all of the pastas were perfection. If I really had to choose it would be the homemade pasta on the last night— “maccheroni a la Norma”. Plenty of day trips if you can pull yourself away from the pool—Taormina, Catania, Caltagirone, Noto, Siracusa, Ragusa, Modica, and Etna of course. You can book them through The Thinking Traveller, and tell them Yolo sent you—you’ll get 5% off your booking!