Bubba, I don't know where you went in Sicily but you must have been doing something wrong. I loved Sicily. Sure small streets and dirty urban areas but great country side, incredible history, and even better food. But to each his own like you said.
I've always loved Spain, maybe because each of the regions are so different. Bilbao and Santander (on the north coast up near or in Basque country), Madrid, and Barcelona are about as different from each other as any three countries in Europe are.
England and Scotland felt almost like a second home because of the obvious cultural similarities.
I had a great time in France and found most people to be pretty polite if you tried to speak French, even in Paris where the locals can be notoriously rude. If you get the chance, go out to Normandy. It's beautiful country. Normandy also won a special place in my heart when a little old man said "Thank you for coming in 1944" with a huge smile on his face when he learned I was an American. It made me wish I could have said, thanks for coming in 1778.
Germany. Oh Germany. I'll preface this by saying I didn't get to spend much time there (2-ish days), so I don't think my experience was a large enough sample size to get an accurate picture. Everything I loved about the Italians and Greeks being laid back, the Germans weren't. Maybe that was just the culture shock of going from southern Europe after several weeks to Germany. The Germans almost seemed to have a fetish for everything being orderly. Almost like following rules was more important than what the rules meant. A letter of the law crowd, not a spirit of the law one. I remember thinking, at one point, that it just didn't shock me that the Germans were able to say "we were just following orders" when it came to the second World War and the Holocaust. I'm sure if I had been able to get out more I would have liked the place, especially if I would have been able to avail myself of some more of their beer.