Italy Travel Review: Rome, Sorrento, Amalfi Coast, Sicily, Taormina, Palermo, Vatican, Colosseum, Walking Food Tour

Our hotel in Palermo was the biggest disappointment of the trip. It was dingy, it smelled, and we couldn’t wait to leave it. One of the couples that we went with complained that their room was dirty and the air conditioner did not work. They complained that night and no one responded. They actually wanted me to try to get a refund on their room there. I feel that our travel company should cross that hotel off their list! (We have photos from the dirty room and will forward directly to our travel agency). We were totally spoiled because all of the other hotels were lovely. Also, other hotel employees were kind and helpful. This hotel had none of those people. We felt that they were not very approachable.They had another tour group there at the same time and at one point asked us to leave the bar area for the other group!! This hotel was a far cry from the others, we were spoiled!!
The morning after arriving, we enjoyed the walking food tour with our guide and that made the Palermo stop a good one. Otherwise, we would have thought to skip Palermo because our first impression at that hotel was not a good one.  
The only other thing we encountered was a very long ride from Palermo to Taormina from the airport. We would probably try to fly from Naples to Catania and plan the stops in Sicily differently if we were to do it again.