Sicily, Italy

I want to preface this review by saying I (F, Black) travelled to Sicily with my partner (F, White) to Cefalu for a relaxing trip over the Easter holiday. I’m slightly masc presenting whilst my partner is quite maximalist in her style. I’m aware that these additional factors had an effect on my holiday experience. We decided it best not to show PDA as there didn’t seem to be much queer representation around. We were in town for 5 days before travelling to Palermo for the last bit of our holiday.

Throughout the trip we experienced a lot of staring, whispering behind our backs, pointing, taking unsolicited pics and giggling. Mostly due to how my partner presents and she wasn’t bothered by it even though it was annoying me so we let it slide. However I experienced a lot of micro and macro agressions from other Italians in such a short amount of time it really put me off ever coming back to Sicily.

Generally service at restaurants was really good and we found some nice food spots that we returned to. But one night we went to a restaurant called Liska – the host was excited by my partners fashion showering her with compliments but completely ignored me. Did not look at me to take my order, when I spoke to him he replied back to my gf only. I asked for his recommendations and he replied with disinterest and was very snarky. he put down the card reader in front of my gf to pay, I reached over to pay the hefty bill and he returned the receipt back to her and just walked away. Was such blatant disregard for my existence.

There was a time were I went to use a toilet cubicle at the beach bar – there were two stalls. I came out of my stall and a lady was waiting cos the other was occupied. I moved so she could go into my empty one, looked me up and down and then just waited for the other to be free…

The icing on the cake was when I was waiting for an arancini order and an older gentleman drove past and shouted beautiful to my partner then Black at me with a horrible look on his face. I live in London so haven’t experienced such overt racism in quite some time so this really turned a relaxing trip away into something horrible. I cried multiple times in such a short space of time and it was exhausting feeling like I wasn’t accepted.

Otherwise, the food was really lovely and fresh. The beach was very nice and there’s a lot of history attached to the place. Really walkable town as well so you can explore it all in a day or two. Not much I could see in the way of nightlife but there are bars and the wine is excellent.

This was my personal experience as a queer woman and maybe for others it might be fine if you’re more conventional presenting. I won’t be rushing to come back though.