Camping Almoetia

It’s a lovely place, and the showers and toilets are clean. But the older man who owns or manages the campsite was really rude to us twice. First, he complained when we used their water to clean bird droppings off our tent. Then we asked to buy ice flakes for our cooler, and he just kept repeating that normal people use fridges.

For the price I paid, I was very happy with my overnight stay, and I slept really well. Maybe we had good camping neighbors 😁. It wasn’t very busy while we were there, so the loose setup for tent pitches didn’t cause us much trouble. There are no marked spaces or boundaries, though, so you pitch wherever you like. If you go out in the evening, someone might block your car access or set up too close. The tent area could use better upkeep. The bathrooms looked reasonably clean, but smelled strongly of urine in the evening and heavy bleach in the morning. I’ve seen much worse, so I’m not complaining, but more frequent cleaning might help. A few basic rules, like quiet hours, and a little more order in the pitching area would improve things. We only stayed overnight, so I can’t say what the restaurant is like. The beach a few hundred meters away was filthy when we went, with lots of rubbish in the sea, so I wouldn’t recommend it.

It was the best shaded spot we found in the area, with decent facilities and a green, quiet feel. There were lots of mosquitoes all day, though, and walking to the nearby beach wasn’t pleasant: local drivers went fast, and there was no pavement. I paid almost €60 for one night with a smaller van, which is a high price. Even so, compared with the other camper stops and campsites we checked first, which were overcrowded and had no shade, I’d still recommend this one to anyone looking for a quiet green campsite near the beach.

The bathrooms were disgusting, and we packed up and left the morning after checking in, even though we’d planned to stay three nights in the Catania area. Each bathroom had three stalls, but only one regular toilet; the other two were ceramic holes in the floor. Everything was extremely dirty. There was no toilet paper in the stalls or soap in any dispenser by the sinks. The showers were free, which was a plus, but they left plenty to be desired too. There was a dead bird in the grass right beside them, and who knows how long it had been there. The owner was very kind while arranging our stay, but I can’t recommend this place to anyone camping in a tent. EDIT: It seems normal for Sicilian campsites to have no toilet paper or soap in their bathrooms, so I should take that part of my original review back. That doesn’t change my rating, since these bathrooms were still extremely dirty compared with every other campsite we stayed at on the island.