Like quite a few of our European trips, this trip was built around available award flights. High on the list was Paris (to see the renovated Notre Dame Cathedral) and Sicily. In July 2025, I found a Dallas to Paris flight for two on Delta in April. While not a bargain, the miles required were lower than usual for Delta, and I had just enough miles for two tickets. There is no risk in booking a Delta award ticket because you can cancel anytime and redeposit the miles, with no fees.
I then started hunting for a return flight originating somewhere in Europe for about a two-week trip. A week or so later, I stumbled across a great deal on Air France from Istanbul to Dallas, with a connection in Paris. The downside was that the trip would be about a week longer than we wanted, and the flight from Istanbul would depart at 4:20am (yuck!). While not ideal, a longer trip would give us more time in Sicily, so we decided to book that. There was some risk in booking this ticket because the fee to redeposit Air France miles when cancelling was €70 per person.
At that point we were nine months out. We reserved a hotel for three nights in Paris, but otherwise, we did not plan much else until February. In March when we booked a noncancellable stay at an Airbnb in Malta we really liked, we were all in.
Our scheduled Delta flight to Paris was via a connecting flight in Salt Lake City. We were very enthused about this because the Paris flight was on a new Airbus with Delta’s newest suites in business class, which had received nice reviews. We arrived at DFW on a beautiful Easter Sunday morning about 2 hours before our flight. Shortly after we were there, we noticed our inbound flight was a little late, and we were going to have a tighter connection. We were nervous. Then the flight posted a further delay, and our connection time was down to 15 minutes. We were thinking through options. We decided to stick with our original flight, and we were prepared to stay overnight in SLC if necessary. Then my phone rang. Delta called to tell me we had been rebooked to Detroit and then Paris. Now our flight to Paris was on an older Boeing airplane, and we were not sitting near each other. The main flight attendant serving us was awful. He clearly wanted to be somewhere else. The Delta experience we were excited about turned into a huge disappointment.
We arrived in Paris on Monday morning. We stayed at a Sofitel near the Eiffel Tower. The hotel was nice, the breakfast was excellent, but the room was tiny. Since we arrived five hours before check-in time, we dropped off our bags and explored the area. Of course, we tried the craft beer bar a few blocks from our hotel (where a beer was $12 and a burger and fries was $18).
We had last been in Paris 15 years ago. It was interesting how things had changed. The most noticeable was that more English was spoken, menus everywhere were in French and English, and restaurant servers were friendly and patient. The highlight of our stay was seeing the reconstructed Notre Dame Cathedral. The place was spectacular, and the exterior was no longer dirty. We visited a few old haunts such as the Tuileries garden. Of course, we had several nice meals in Paris. One day we bought lunch from a food stall at a market and picnicked in a nearby park. On our last evening, we ate dinner at a restaurant at an outdoor table with a magnificent view of the Eiffel Tower. At night, the lights sparkle at the top of the hour. This was the same restaurant Cindy and Meg had been to when Meg was a teenager. After three nights in Paris, we headed out the next morning to Paris Orly airport for our flight to Catania on Transavia Airlines.
Catania is the second largest city in Sicily, located on the east coast. After arriving at the airport, we took a special airport bus with its first stop about an 8-minute walk from our bed and breakfast. This B&B had only two rooms, and the owner and his family lived in a separate area from the rented section. The place was old, charming, and quirky. We were on the third floor, and the small elevator took about two minutes. After arriving, the highly animated owner sat with us at his kitchen table and gave us an orientation to the city and ideas for day trips. The B&B was on a pedestrian street, just steps from the opera house and a five-minute walk to the main plaza. The location was great for walking, but not as great for using public transit or taxis.
On our first night, we ate at a restaurant close to the B&B. It was amazing. My main dish was a simple Carbonara that was fantastic. The house wine was pretty darn good, and inexpensive. As requested, Cindy later wrote a Google review of the restaurant. We went back two nights later, and the owner recognized her and thanked her for the review. The second meal was equally good.
We spent our first full day exploring the old town area of Catania. Catania has wonderful sites such as its main plaza, a cathedral, a lovely fountain, a bustling fish market, etc. We found Catania a bit grittier than other areas of Italy. Cindy got a kick out of a guy outside a restaurant hustling up customers by singing “Volare.” The second day, we took a bus to Taormina, the most famous resort town in Sicily. The main town is perched up high on a cliff overlooking the sea. The scheduled hour and 10-minute bus ride there took two and a half hours due to road repair delays. The town was lovely, but with the bus delay we did not have enough time to visit the ancient Coliseum there. We decided we had better stick to our scheduled bus ride back to Catania because the buses were completely full on the way there. We had a nice lunch in Taormina on a covered patio with a view of the sea. We walked the main pedestrian street and enjoyed people watching. This was clearly more of a high fashion area and more touristy than Catania. We made it back to Catania in time to have a nice pizza with house wine at an outdoor table next to the opera house.
After three nights, our next stop in Sicily was Siracusa. We took the bus from Catania. We had a hotel for three nights on the small island of Ortygia (part of Siracusa). The entire island is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Siracusa has a fascinating history. Archimedes was born here, and Plato spent time here as well. Siracusa was one of the most important cities of the ancient world.
Ortygia was much nicer and well-cared-for compared to Catania. You can walk the perimeter of the entire island in an hour. It was fun to explore all the narrow pedestrian-only streets. The island has hundreds of restaurants. We had several amazing meals there.
We toured the Archaeological Park in Siracusa, including the remnants of a Roman amphitheater, a large and well-preserved Greek Theater that is still used today, and interesting rock and cave formations.
After three nights, we took a bus to Catania Airport to pick up a rental car. We had arrived early, and I succumbed to the sales pitch of a better car available immediately versus waiting an hour for the car I had reserved. Our car was a brand-new VW Golf with a diesel engine. We then drove about three hours to our VRBO rental for three nights in Porto Empedocle (on the southern coast of Sicily near Agrigento). As we arrived prior to our check-in time, we took the advice of our host and went to lunch at a nearby restaurant on the beach. The rental unit had its quirks, including a bed that would work well for 1.5 people. The best feature was a lovely, covered porch where we spent a lot of time enjoying the sensational weather. The washing machine was outside on the patio as well. We did our grocery shopping at the local Lidl. Our grocery cart included a bottle of Prosecco for €2 and other Sicilian wines for about that price. It was all good! We had breakfast and dinner at the rental each night and ate lunch out.
The highlight of our entire trip was visiting the Valley of the Temples site just outside Agrigento. The site had several well-preserved Greek temples from the 5th Century BC, high on a hill. This reminded us of seeing the Acropolis in Athens four years earlier, but with 99% fewer people.
We also wanted to see the old town of Agrigento, but we were aware that driving and parking there was difficult, including the risk of a fine from accidentally entering restricted zones (ZTLs). Since we had paid to park at the temples, we just kept our car there after the visit and took the city bus to town. We walked around, had lunch, and then, the one and only time on this entire trip, it started raining on us. We ducked into a local tavern to wait out the rain. After the rain, we took the bus back to our car.
The next day we had planned for a one-hour drive to a small town off the beaten track that our VRBO host had suggested. Our only mistake was relying solely on Google Maps to get us there. The first 15 minutes of the drive were great. Then Google Maps had us turn on a road that was narrow even for one car. Overgrown vegetation from both sides of the road were brushing up against the side of the car. Encountering another car along the way would be a disaster. This was not the fun driving in Italy I was used to. After a mile and a half, we found a spot with just enough room to turn around. We gave up. We instead headed back to the coast to a beach area. We had a nice lunch at a restaurant on the beach, followed by beach walking on a perfect afternoon.
On the morning of departure, we loaded the car to head back to Catania Airport. This was our first time flying Ryanair. Our flight ended up being about an hour and a half late. Because Malta is so close to Sicily, the wheels up time was only about 25 minutes. We had feared the worst about Ryanair based on all the stories we had heard, but we survived. Upon arrival at the Malta airport, I loaded the address of our Airbnb into the Bolt App, and off we went. Our Bolt driver dropped us off at 47 Triq Ix – Xatt. But we had a problem. As we discovered, there are two places with that same address, about half a mile apart! Both places are on the road that borders the seafront. We ended up walking to the other 47 Triq Ix – Xatt, dodging crowds while cutting through endless outdoor restaurants set up on the sidewalk. The walk with our luggage was frustrating after our delayed flight, but it was all better when we arrived and saw our place.
The Airbnb we had for five nights was spectacular. Our place was on the seventh floor in Sliema, right on the seafront, with a spectacular view of the capital city Valetta just across the bay. We had a balcony to enjoy the view, including the nightly fireworks.
We were not sure what to expect of Malta, other than the historic sites and a lot of history. English is one of the official languages. Our main impression was how crowded the place was with tourists. We ended up coming at a peak time (warm, but not yet too hot). Tourists outnumbered residents 7 to 1. The sidewalks and restaurants were crowded. The foreigners were mostly in their 20s and 30s.
Before our trip, we had talked to a lady from Milwaukee that Tom had met on his Bulgaria trip. She visits Malta every January for a music festival. She raved about Malta public transport. They did have an excellent deal, where we had unlimited use of buses during our stay for €21. However, the first bus we tried to catch was full and did not even stop at our stop. The next bus was also full but did stop and let a few people on (but not us!). We finally got on a bus; it was jam packed. That story continued our entire trip, although we did figure out how to avoid peak times.
One morning we took the ferry over to Valetta, a short ride. Valetta is on a hill with a defensive wall around the city. Fortunately, a city bus meets the ferry to take people up a steep hill to the town. This happened to be an electric bus, and the bus was full. It could not make it up the hill! They kept asking a few people at a time to exit until the bus had enough power to get up the steepest part of the hill! We rejoined the bus a few blocks later, but with all that commotion we missed our stop and ended up at the ferry port on the other side of the city, back at sea level. We paid €1 each to take an elevator up to the city.
We took the bus to Mdina, an ancient walled city. This city was the capital of Malta until 1530. Many of the buildings still in use today are from the 12th century. No cars are allowed in the city. Since the resident population is only 250, the thousands of people we saw there were 99% tourists. We had a nice rooftop lunch while we were there.
Unfortunately, the most important ancient site in Malta, the Saflieni Hypogeum underground burial chamber was closed while we were in Malta. We went to see another burial chamber, the St. Paul’s Catacombs in Rabat (walking distance from Mdina).
The highlight of the Malta ancient sites was the Hagar Qim and Mnajdra Temples, on a hilltop next to the sea. The temples are over 5,000 years old. Among other interesting features, the temples are aligned with the sun at the equinox and solstice. The temples were close to the Blue Grotto. We took a boat ride through the caves and had lunch overlooking the water before visiting the temples. The water in some places was clear and bright blue.
Tom took a half day and went on the bus to Birgu, one of the “Three Cities.” Birgu has a view of Valetta on the opposite side of the city from our Airbnb in Sliema. Birgu was the capital after Mdina during the rule of the Knights of St. John. Another walled city, the highlight was Ft. St. Angelo. Apparently, a lot of scenes from Game of Thrones took place here. Tom also saw the Inquisitor’s Palace, which triggered some renewed interest in religious history about the Inquisition. Our last night, we returned to the same delightful restaurant we had eaten at two nights earlier. This place had won some kind of Michelin budget restaurant recognition. Of course, the waiter recognized us. Two nights earlier, we had sat near a table of four German ladies. Those same ladies were now right next to us! And they said they had eaten there the night before and were planning to come back the next night. We found a winner of a restaurant.
After five nights at our wonderful rental, it was time to head to the airport for our flight on Turkish Air business class to Istanbul. The flight was nice, the seats were great (larger and more legroom than first class in the US), the meal was excellent, as was the service. I understand now why frequent flyer seats were available on our flight: The business class cabin had twenty-four seats, and only four of those seats were filled.
We had an interesting ride from Istanbul airport to our hotel. The first 45 minutes were uneventful, as we made it within a few miles of our hotel easily. The last two miles took an hour. We arrived on a Thursday that happened to be a holiday in Turkey. Massive crowds had gathered in the old town for celebrations. Our driver, who did not speak English, handed me his phone with Google Translate with a message that read due to severe traffic congestion, I will be dropping you off about nine hundred meters from your hotel. I protested and wrote a message on my phone translated to Turkish that explained that is not what I paid for. We knew that our hotel was in a pedestrian zone and we would have to walk 120 meters, but nine hundred meters amid massive human congestion with our luggage was not acceptable. We prevailed, our driver was not happy (I can only imaging how his Turkish would have translated), but it was a slow, slow, creep to our drop off point.
Our hotel in Istanbul was wonderful. We were using Marriott points at an Autograph hotel that had an excellent location close to the grand bazar. We had a relaxing sit-down orientation discussion upon check in, welcome drink in hand, with a staff person who went over hotel details and an old town map. We discussed our plans and he offered suggestions and helpful tips. We had dinner at a rooftop restaurant nearby that first evening that he had suggested. Our breakfast the next morning (and the following four mornings) was an amazing, delicious, and abundant Turkish breakfast.
Turkey is a Muslim country, and there are mosques everywhere. We had a mosque across the street from our hotel, and our room faced the street. The call to prayer was very loud in our room. We were awakened every morning around 5:30am for the first one. A few times during our stay we headed to bed before 9:30; however, the evening call to prayer woke us up.
Our first full day in Istanbul started out with a 3-hour group walking tour. We had about fifteen people in our group. Our guide was particularly good. He discussed history, politics, current attitude of Turks, tips to avoid tourist traps and when to go to popular sites to avoid long lines, etc. We saw the outside and the courtyard of the Blue Mosque, we saw the outside of the Hagia Sophia (built by the Greeks in 532, originally as a Christian church but now a mosque—also covered with scaffolding). We went inside a mosque and learned the protocol for visiting a mosque as a non-Muslim (such as shoes off and women covering their head). We visited the grand bazar (something like 4,000 shopkeepers under one roof).
Our overall impression of Istanbul can be captured in one word: Overwhelming. While much of the old town is restricted from traffic, the roads were heavily congested with people (some tourists, but mostly locals). While Istanbul is an amazing place, the crowded conditions were getting to us. We started looking forward to being away from people for a while.
Our meals in Istanbul were mostly terrific and reasonably priced. There was an outdoor covered area close to our hotel that had about twenty restaurants. Four of the restaurants there were on our walking tour guide’s recommended list, and we had meals at all four places. The price of alcohol in Turkey is extremely high due to taxes, and many restaurants did not serve alcohol. Tom tried the local yogurt as a drink (both in a sealed cup and “on tap”). When a place did have beer or wine, it was two or three times the price we had experienced in Sicily or Malta.
Cindy decided she was not interested in seeing Topkapi Palace (the entry fee was a ridiculous TLY 2750, about $61), so she took it easy for a day while Tom saw the palace, including the harem.
On our first day when we saw the outside of the Blue Mosque, there was a line about an hour long to get in. We went back by ourselves first thing in the morning, where the line was only 5 minutes. The mosque was large, beautiful, and full of tourists snapping photos. This mosque had been in the news a few months earlier when Pope Leo made a visit there.
It was time to venture outside the old town, so we took a tram across the sea and a funicular up the hill to near Galata Tower. We strolled down the famous pedestrian boulevard in Istanbul, Istaklal Caddesi, that went from the funicular stop to Taksim Square. What an interesting day for the visit, as riot police were gathering, and Taksim Square (the main gathering point in Istanbul) had been fenced off. We read later that the authorities were expecting an unauthorized gathering from the labor unions. We did not want to get caught up in anything, so we moved away from Taksim Square. Of course, no visit to Istanbul would be complete without stopping by an Irish pub at noon and enjoying a pint of Kilkenny Irish Ale.
Tom was adventurous enough to try a hammam. He went to an historic hammam that goes back the 1400s, that our tour guide from day one had pointed out. It was an authentic experience, including a scrub by a man who spoke only a few words of English.
We knew our last day was going to be a challenge. Our flight left Istanbul at 4:20am. It is an hour to the airport, with a recommended arrival at least three hours before the flight. So, we would need to leave our hotel around midnight. We thought about paying for an extra night, but we concluded we would not sleep knowing we were setting an alarm for two hours later. We were fortunate enough with my Marriott status to have a 4pm late checkout. At 4, we brought our luggage to the lobby and headed across the sea on a ferry to the Asia side of Istanbul. We had some light food at a seaside café. The view was nice, but the food was unexpectedly poor. We took the subway back (much shorter ride) to Europe. We had a light meal at a place in our favorite area for restaurants. This food was much better. We were back at the hotel around 8pm. We relaxed in the Mezzanine lounge. Tom enjoyed the sauna and freshened up with a shower and a shave from the spa area. Then a surprise—the hotel staff came to the lounge at around 10:30pm to let us know our driver had arrived an hour and a half early! Cindy was at the gym at the time walking on the treadmill. We did not want to get to the airport too early because the Air France check in desk would not open until 1:20am. The hotel staff talked to the driver who acknowledged he was early, and willing to wait until the appointment time. But we were bored with hanging out at the hotel, so we decided to leave around 11:15. We did wait at the airport about an hour and 15 minutes until Air France showed up. But we checked in quickly and had an hour and a half in a nice lounge before heading to the gate.
The Air France flight to Paris was unremarkable, and we managed to sleep a bit. The Air France flight from Paris to DFW was spectacular. Champagne, good wine, top-notch food, and excellent, attentive staff. We both managed some sleep after the main meal. After our crappy Delta experience on the way to Paris, it was great to have a wonderful experience on the way back.
By the time we made it back to the Ranch, it had been 25 hours since we left the hotel in Istanbul. After a quick run to the grocery store to be ready for morning, we were in bed by 7pm.
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