I keep hearing about this "Noto" so much that I had to look it up just now, and I love Italy so much I am going to visit it myself, but Sicily....never disappoints.
I don't even have to search for poverty/trash and I find it in Sicily. Here is the first road I even bothered to StreetView in the Noto area,
http://goo.gl/maps/xcbAH
If it isn't the trash, it's the roadways. Just zoom around here a little bit, you would swear I accidentally found Noto's trash yard.
Southern Italy needs a lot of love, especially Sicily
I think the furthest south I would consider going in Italy is Pompeii/Amalfi Coast, beyond that and things just fall apart too much.
Originally Posted by
Giggleswick
I have been to Sicily, and that's not what I'd say about it. No, it was not all pretty and antiseptic, and yes, it did have poverty and disorder, but it also had plenty of fascinating places to visit and things to see. Granted, I'm interested in architecture, archaeology, history, and folklore, and not everybody is, but I found Sicily to have many "cool" things: the Greek temples at Agrigento, Selinunte, and Segesta, historic towns like Erice and Cefalu, fantastic architecture in Palermo and Monreale, high Baroque architectural excess in Noto, extensive Roman mosaics at Piazza Armerina, thermal baths, wild countryside with ancient necropoli, fabulous gelato....