After many trips to many regions in Italy, 2 couples are considering a visit to Sicily the last week of December and a few days into January. Seeking ideas for a home base as will have a car for day trips. Recommendations for what to see/do and wondering also if the holidays interfere with openings of sights, shops, etc. Prefer smaller places to the big cities for the majority of the stay. The beach does not interest us and understand the weather could be chilly. Flying the US, so airport help would be nice. We typically do a VRBO and love to shop the markets and do most of our own cooking. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated as we are clueless. Thanks!

This should be in the Europe forum.

Moved to Europe board

Lots of unanswered questions there.... but the one thing I remember best about Sicily is the food. I'd want to sample that rather than do a lot of my own cooking.


A good guide book will outline the major sites. If you have slightly more than a week to sightsee you will have to make hard choices.

As Gwendolynn notes, with slightly more than a week, you will need to be extremely selective – seeing just the highlights of Sicily normally requires 2.5 to 3 weeks.

And I also agree that a good guidebook should serve you very well. IME, the Rough Guide for Sicily provides excellent coverage. And there are MANY many MANY threads on this forum about travel to Sicily -- not just trip reports, but also planning threads, in which your questions have been addressed many times and in great depth.

Unfortunately, Sicily does not readily lend itself to base cities. Palermo and Siracusa (specifically, Ortigia) are the usual suspects for longer stays.

The major international airports are in Palermo and Catania.

Hope that helps!