That Time We Got COVID in Italy

We booked an 11-day Rick Steves tour of Sicily for March-April. The original plan was to fly into Rome, spend the night, and fly to Palermo the next day (which would be one day before the tour started).

The Sicily tour started in Palermo and ended in Catania. We decided to add some extra days in Sorrento before flying home, so booked a flight from Catania to Naples, where we would take a train or a bus to Sorrento. After our stay there, we chose to travel back to Naples and fly to Rome, spend the night again and fly home the next day.

One of our more complicated trips in terms of transportation logistics, but nothing too unusual. And we built in plenty of extra time in the itinerary. Keep this in mind for later!

And it all would have been great…until Bob got cold symptoms on Day 2 of the tour in Palermo, requiring the tour leader to test for COVID. Note that if we had been on our own, or at home, it would not have occurred to us to test. The symptoms were so minor - a runny nose, some sneezing, slight post-nasal-drip cough. No fever, no aches, no major cough, not tired, nothing.

Once you test positive, you are done with the tour and cannot rejoin (more on that later). And just like that, we are on our own in Italy, with 9 days of scheduled activities, hotel stays and transportation - gone. Plus, one of us has COVID. And the other one is resigned to getting it too at some point.

The end result was a whole lot of days of…not much. So this travelogue will be structured a bit differently. Read on!