Beyond Confused!!

iw,

A few initial thoughts (and I may have a few more thoughts after further reflection).....

Given the fact that you also want to travel to Sicily to find your grandfather's village, I suspect that a time frame of 13 days might be a bit too short. The first point to keep in mind is that you'll lose two days for flights, and probably won't be up to "touring speed" for the first few days after arrival due to jet lag.

I'd have to spend some time looking at the possibilities, but my initial impression is that you could consider something like this.....

• Flight to Naples; Bus to Sorrento and use that as a base for touring the Amalfi coast - 5 days?
• Curreri Viaggi bus from Sorrento to Naples airport, flight to Sicily; Which is the closest airport to your grandfather's village, Palermo or Catania? - 4 days (you might need to budget extra time might for getting to & from small villages).
• Flight from Sicily to Rome; Rome, touring and day trips - 4 days (I believe easyJet has flights from both Palermo and Catania, but some of these may be seasonal).
• Train to Civitavechhia (I assume that's where you board the ship?).

There are many possibilities and this is only one suggestion.

Good luck with your planning!

Thank you so much..

Grandpa was from Alcamo and I'm really not quite sure how to go about finding the actual village or neighborhood. I'm wondering if I can actually find a place for records, or find an interrupter to assist.

If I can just walk around the area he was at, that would be wonderful too.

Our thought was to spend a day or 2 in Naples, 2 at Amalfi area, 4 in Palermo, 5 in Rome.

Hoping that we can make the most of that. :-)

Just start plugging in data into whatever flight website you like (e.g., Kayak, Skyscanner). I would kinda hate to only spend 4 nights in Naples and the Amalfi Coast, so I would consider splitting the time between Palermo and Rome.

Could you fly all the way to Palermo the first day? It’s a jet-lagged day anyways, so why not fly to the furthest destination? Alcamo is not far from Palermo. Then fly to Naples and train back to Rome. You’ll have to play around with this but I think you could make this work. You are moving around a lot with big skips which churns up time, but you should go where you want to go.

That's a great idea as well!!! I'll start looking into that..

My poor brain!!! LOL

I'm wondering if I can actually find a place for records

You can search this site for Sicilian surnames:
http://sicilia.indettaglio.it/eng/cognomi/motore/motore.html

Italy is digitizing their civil records of births, marriages, etc, enabling you to do some research online yourself. Please see my post where I provide some additional details of the online registries:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/palermo-sicily-how-to-find-where-deceased-relatives-lived-worked-church-etc

This is the website for the Archives of Trapani:
http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Trapani/

The site says that Trapani's digitization is "still in progress" but I'm seeing a lot online for Alcamo:
http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Trapani/Stato+civile+italiano/Alcamo/

If you know the years, you can search for specific life events such as marriage, death and (as an example) this one for births:
http://dl.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/v/Archivio+di+Stato+di+Trapani/Stato+civile+italiano/Alcamo/Nati/

At that last level of detail, you'll see actual scans of the registry books. With some searching, you may be able find your grandfather's name among the various records, and perhaps then, a village name. If you do find an entry, I may be able to help you with the Italian, assuming it is legible.

Some basic Italian words will help:

Matrimoni - marriages
Nati - births
Morti - deaths
Indici decennali - 10 year indexes

Good luck with your research!

Rome2rio suggests flying into Palermo and then flying to Naples then to Amalfi Coast would be viable. You are covering a lot of ground here but since you seem to have thirteen days on the ground seems doable. I am assuming that’s what you mean when you say 13 days in Italy because the day you board the cruise is a day on the cruise, right?

CWsocial,

Thank you so very much!!! That's Amazing!!

vftravels,

Yep, We have our 13 days, then the cruise, then home. The cruise in 10 days, and we actually port in Naples for a day.