Seasoned Travelers to Sicily!
We are planning to overnight in Palermo, Agrigento, Taormina and Syracuse - also, possibly Catania to catch flight home. This is our first time on Sicily.
We are travelers who like luxury-type hotels so would like feedback on the following:
Palermo: Centrale Palace or Principe di Villafranca or Grand Hotel Villa Igiea
Agrigento: Colleverde Park or ?
Taormina: Monte Tauro or Grand Hotel Atlantis Bay or Grand Hotel Timeo or Willa Sant Andrea
Syracuse: Grand Hotel Villa Politi or any suggestions for another 4* hotel?
Advice appreciated!

Jennie, Have you seen my recent trip report? You can also find it at slowtrav.com We liked Principe Villafranca very much---a fine boutique hotel. In Taormina, The GH Timeo is wonderful with the best views in town. However, the Villa Schuler is much cheaper and very nice. I will post a link to my report next. Be sure to see the link to the photo gallery as well---the flower pot shot with Etna behind is from GH Timeo.

Jennie, here is the link--good luck !

http://www.slowtrav.com/tr/tripreport.asp?tripid=634

The Grand Hotel Villa Politi in Siracusa has one major disadvantage: it is in the totally characterless "modern" part of Siracusa.

You might consider the Grand Hotel on Ortygia Island, which is the older, far more fascinating part of Siracusa; it also has many more and better restaurants than "modern" Siracusa. I think the Grand Hotel is also a 4-star hotel. There is one bad review on www.tripadvisor.com, but most of the reviews are good.

ttt for jennie16

Bringing yourmesage back up to the top, since you have poted it repeatedly, and it's still not clear if you understand "click on your own name"... nor "topping" (bringing your own message back up to the top)...

One thing that does NOT help is re-posting with a message header that sounds increasingly desperae (HELP!) but provides no information on the places you're seeking info about.

You might not get much in the way of detailed answers, simply because no one has personal experience with these hotels, to answer you.

Best wishes,

Rex

Palermo : the Grand Hotel Villa Igiea is lovely. The only possible drawback is that it is on the outskirts of the city, but they have a shuttle bus to the centre during the daytime & there are of course taxis. We quite liked spending the morning sightseeing, with maybe lunch in town, then going back for a lazy afternoon by the pool.

Agrigento : the Hotel Foresteria Baglio della Luna is nice. It's a few km from town, the other side of the valley of the temples. (Presumably you will have a car ?) Great food.

Taormina : the best hotel I've stayed in there is the San Domenico Palace, a former monastery. We liked it a lot (spent part of our honeymoon there). Best rooms are on the ground floor with a terrace facing the sea. Very central.

I've also stayed in the Monte Tauro (as well as the Villa Belvedere & the Villa Riiz). It is a big modern concrete hotel - quite ugly from the outside but the rooms, at least when I stayed there (c. 9 years ago), were large and reasonably smart with reasonably sized terraces. The pool was very good. The breakfast room wasn't - I think it may be a hotel used for package holidays, as there seemed to be lots of large groups. Not much character.

Siracusa : the Grand Hotel is nice and as Eloise says, it's in the most intersting and charming part of town.

You said "we plan to overnight" : I hope you're not planning to spend only one night in each place, are you ? As has repeatedly been said before on this forum, people who try to do the whole of Sicily in a week or less invariably don't seem impressed. Take time to enjoy it. We've so far spent 3 x 2-week holidays there & still have lots to experience.

Ugghh... sorry for all the typos (worse, still - - copied and pasted three times!)

Still - - hopefully, this is getting you some answers...