Jim had been watching our videos for a while before he ever showed up in person. He runs Living Overseas TV, and he’s won six Emmy Awards for his work as a producer, so when he told us he wanted to meet us in Sicily, we were both flattered and a little starstruck.

He came to the north coast thinking about a second home, somewhere he and his family could land that felt affordable but still special. We walked him through Casa Santa in Tusa, a stone home tucked high above the medieval village, just steps from the ruins of an old castle.

The house belonged to a family whose grandmother, Nonna Santina, raised her grandchildren inside those same walls. Standing on the top-floor terrace with the Mediterranean stretched out below, at €44,000 for 146 square meters (about 1,572 square feet), it was easy to see why Jim wanted to sit down and talk about it on camera.

What struck us most was how quickly he got it. He has traveled the world for his work, so he knows what a real deal looks like versus a gimmick. Sicily, to him, was clearly the former.

I think Sicily really has a lot of bang for your buck. I think it’s really undiscovered. When you look at what you can buy here and own, and have a sea view or close to the sea or just beautiful mountain views, there’s so much to offer here, affordable, but also a really good quality of life.

We spent the day going back and forth between his questions about visas and daily life and our questions about his channel and the places he has covered. It felt less like a client meeting and more like two families comparing notes on the same dream.

Jim is still weighing his options for a home on the north coast, somewhere between Cefalù and Palermo, in that stretch of coastline he clearly fell for. Whatever he decides, we loved having him here, and we loved hearing him say out loud what we already believe about Sicily.

It is undiscovered, it is affordable, and once you stand on a terrace like that one in Tusa, it is very hard to leave.