My first trip to Sicily was pre-GPS in the early 2000s. Desperately lost in the chaos of downtown Palermo on a congested one-way street, I yelled over honking horns to ask a policeman how to get to my hotel. “Well, you can go straight, left, left, and left again, then right … or,” he paused and waved his hands with the drama of an opera star, “you can slowly back up very slowly against the traffic for 200m and it’s right there!”

Ah, Sicily. I’ve missed you. The Giro d’Italia returned to Italy on Monday following three controversial and equally fascinating days in Israel. Perhaps it was only fitting that its first stop back in “bella Italia” would be on its most beguiling of islands.