We spent 10 days in Sicily at the end of September and beginning of October. The weather was perfect - a little too cool for swimming and ideal for tourning. The sun was hot but the shade cool. We had no trouble driving - picked the car up as we left Palermo and dropped it off when we arrived in Taormina, our last stop. The only problem we had was driving in very small towns. The roads were sometime so narrow that it was difficult to turn around to leave town.

Great thread with so many good suggestions.

Hi, I would like to jump in & ask Anna Galea if one would need a car in her 3 town suggestions outside of Catania. We are travelling in May - I am making the excursion to Stromboli, but would also like to do Etna - just trying to figure out whether to drive there & organize a tour, or tour out of Catania/Taormina. We will be picking up car in Palermo, spending couple nights Erice area, couple nights Agrigento area (there is an interesting beach down there I'd like to explore) a couple nights Ortigia/Syracuse and then Etna & Stromboli - I had planned 1-2 nights Taormina, but really don't like cities, so am 2nd guessing my self. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks so much for all your suggestions. It’s been a very helpful thread.

We’ve pretty much decided to fly into Palermo on the 9/25 and leave from Catania 10/13. That leaves us with 16 days in Sicily minus the travel days. Though I doubt that the fares will get any lower based on comments here and on www.slowtrav.com, I thought I’d wait for a few more days to book. I’ve looked on Kayak, Orbitz, and Vayama. If anyone can suggest alternative sites, please do so.

Now comes the difficult part- where to go, how many days in each place, and where to stay. As I originally said, we prefer locating ourselves in one place and taking day trips from there. I understand that Sicily does not lend itself to this and that we will have to move around a bit.

Here is the basic itinerary I am thinking about:

Day 1-4: Palermo (with the jet lag day that leaves 2 full days to explore the city- enough time?)
Day 5-6: Northwestern Sicily
Day 7: Agrigento (Do we need 2 nights here)
Day 8-10: Baroque villages (we’d be driving from Agrigento, so that leaves 2 full days- are that enough?)
Day 11-13: Syracusa (too many days after time in the baroque towns?)
Day 14-15: Taormina
Day 16-17: Catania

OK- here are my questions. Of course, I’d love suggestions on the itinerary. I think this is doable, but with a lot of changing lodging and maybe not using time to the best advantage. Is there any way of combining areas so that we would not have to change hotels as often? For example, does it make sense to combine Palermo and Northwestern Sicily? Should we combine the Baroque towns with Syracusa? Can we get to Pizza Armarina from any of the other areas for a day trip and is it worth it to stay overnight in that region? Are we making a mistake not going to the Aeolian Islands? Our thinking is that there is just so much one can do on a 2 week holiday.

Mostly, I’d like to know your further thoughts now that I’ve begun to plan. Any additional suggestions on lodging would be helpful.

We’ll be renting a car. My husband does all the driving, and he has driven in Italy, France, and Spain rather extensively. All the same, it sounds a bit different. In the past, we have rented a mid-size car (for safety, figuring that, in an accident, a larger car is safer). I gather many of you would suggest a smaller car doe Sicily. Right?

We would pick the car up on our way out of Palermo. Can we drop it off in Taormina, since I don’t think we’ll need it after that? How would we get to Catania for the last day’s excursions if we did drop it off in Taormina? Maybe we should just keep the car until we get to Catania. Thoughts?

Thanks again for all your kind suggestions. I also posted on slowtrav and tripadvisor, but have found that you guys are just more helpful.

-Margie (and Larry)
.






.

I would add a day to Palermo. It's a city and there are lots of things to do. If you go to Monreale (and I highly recommend this trip) that will take half a day, getting the bus to and from your location and visiting the monastery and then walking around the town a bit. It's not far out of Palermo but you do need to depend on public transport. I could spend a day wandering around the markets, walking along the seaside, seeing some gardens, etc.

You might want to take a day (or most of it) and go to Cefalu, a really nice town about an hour outside of Palermo.

Taormina is tiny; I think a day there is enough unless you want some down time to relax.

I think 2 days in Syracusa and Ortigya is too much.

By NW Sicily do you mean Trapani and Erice? If so then the public transport schedules from Palermo and back are not good. Too much time on the bus and waiting around for a connection to Erice. It's best to do these towns after you leave Palermo.

Sicily is a wonderful destination, and honestly, you will have a great time with any of the options you are considering.

If you want to do some consolidating, you can do Agrigento as an easy day trip by bus from Palermo (of course you will miss seeing the temples after dark). You could also do Taormina as a day trip (which for me was enough) from Catania. Both buses and trains link Taormina, Catania, and Ortigia.

Ortigia was my favorite place, so I would not scale back but maybe consider adding another day.

We did our whole trip with public transportation which was easy to do and would allow you to reduce some of your driving.

Here is the link to my Trip Report, if you want to take a look: http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...-and-malta.cfm

I think this looks good. Our flight was delayed into Palermo so we only had one full day fo sightseeing (much to my disappointment). We still managed to see quite a bit: Piazza Marina, the Quattro Conti, two of the Oratori with the Serpotta stucco work, the Norman Palace, the Cappella Palatina, the cathedral at Monreale, and shopping and hot chocolate in the new part of town. Obviously we missed a lot, but I found sightseeing in Palermo easy because much of what we wanted to see was close to other sights. Not Monreale, of course.

I might to try to see the Valle dei Templi in Agrigento as a day trip from somewhere else just to give yourself another night somewhere without packing/unpacking. As noted above, you could arrange this from Palermo. We wanted to visit Cefalu from Palermo as well but couldn't fit it in.

I would not cut a night in one of the Baroque towns (Modica has over 100 churches), Palermo or Ortigia if you want some down time/serious eating time as well as sightseeing. Once you start researching Sicily there's just more and more you want to see--at least that was my experience.

We hired a driver to take us from Ortigia to Catania airport. He was recommended on the Sicily forum on TA. Great guy, good service. I'm sure you can find something similar from Taormina, but isn't there a train that runs that route?

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/i...santa-cita.htm

Thnaks, Adrienne and Magster. Mag, your trip report is great. It makes me think that maybe we should use public transportation for at least some of the trip.

I find that everyone's opinion varies and this is why our forum is so helpful. At the same time, when you are new to a region such as Sicily, it can be difficult to sort out. In just the two answers above, Mags liked Syracusa/Ortyiga and Adrienne thought we should just spend a day. Hmm....I wonder if spending more time in one place allows one to aprreciate the atmosphere and culture. I know that I now love Venice, but during my first visit there, I felt it was too touristy. I had to really spend time there and experience the ambiance to fully appreciate it.

That being said, I had been thinking that we were short changing Palermo. If we add another day, and lose a day in Taormina, maybe that would work.

I'm still working on this. Thanks.

We went to Sicily last May. We saved some airfare by booking round trip to Rome and flying Easy Jet to Palermo and Windjet from Catania.

We did do a day trip to Cefalu from Palermo and enjoyed it. My favorite city was Syracuse, where we stayed in Ortigia. We loved the Valley of the Temples and thought seeing Mt. Etna from Taormina was as good as the actual trip to the mountain (which we did). We stayed at the Hotel Villa Belvedere in Taormina, and the flowers and the view were gorgeous. I liked Ragusa, too, for the cathedral and the shopping (and I'm not much of a shopper).

You will have a wonderful trip. This was something my traveling buddy daughter especially wanted to do, and it was really terrific.

Wow, this is leading me to start thinking about going back to Sicily! If I do, I'll revisit Ortigia, Trapani and Erice, and the Villa Casale (which was undergoing restoration when I was there) and add the Aeolian islands and some time in the interior - maybe Enna and the Madonie. Once was enough for touristy Taormina, but I wouldn't mind more time in Palermo.

To complicate things further, we ended our trip on Ortigia and spent hours in the Siracusa Archaelogical Museum learning about the early history of the island and its settlements. While we had all read about this in advance of the trip, we agreed that we would have liked to see the museum prior to the ancient sites we visited (Valle dei Templi and Segesta) just for context. So flying into Catania and ending in Palermo might also be a good option if you're big museum-and-history people. I think that's what Bon voyage did, spending their first couple of days relaxing in Taormina.

You can't wrong in Sicily. (Note that we found it far less polished than the other places in Italy we have visited--but that is part of its charm.)

Re: Ortygia - It is true that a day or an afternoon in a town leave you with a different flavor than spending a day or more in one place.

Please do not miss seeing the Agrigento temples lit up at night. You and your husband can take turns driving up to the temples so both of you can view the approach from the car. The road winds around so the temples are seen from both sides of the car but the driver must pay attention since the road is narrow and quite dark.

Sicily turned into one our favorite trips. Between the people, food, antiquities, and the landscape, it was all encompassing.

Where are you picking up the rental car? I suggest the airport; it's well outside of town in the direction you're going. Along the way to NW Sicily, you could stop to see the Greek temple and theater at Segesta. On the way to Agrigento you could stop at Selinunte.

I don't think you need so much time in the Sicilian Baroque towns. You could see Noto as a day trip from Siracusa. (It's only about half an hour away, so really a half day trip.)

That would allow you time to see the Roman villa at Casale near Piazza Armerina. The mosaics there were one of the highlights of our trip -- along with Monreale.

We dropped our car in Siracusa, took a nice clean train to Taormina, and, after our stay there, got a driver to take us from Taormina to the Catania airport. Or you could take the bus for this leg.

CalgaryDoll, If you have the rented car, you can drive to places like Etna, Taormina etc, again if you are an experienced driver, but driving is much easier than in centre of cities like Catania. My husband swore he would never drive again in centre of Catania. The towns I mentioned are seaside towns. I am sure you would be able to get a bus connection to Catania.

From Catania there are buses that go directly to Taormina. It is a really lovely town, and feels so rich and high-class there. I love it both in Summer, due to its beaches, and in Winter. The scenary is breath-taking. The road to reach it is winding, up a mountain. As I already said, you can still visit it by bus.

Justretired, be careful that you won't be spending too much time in driving, especially if you prefer a relaxing holiday. Trapani, on the west coast is quite far from Palermo, I would spend a couple of days there. | would not stay in Syracuse, but take a day trip when you are in southern Sicily. From Agrigento to Syracuse it is over 200kms for sure.

You can certainly leave car in Taormina and go by public bus coach to Catania, especially if rental office is at centre of Catania. Alternatively, check out whether rental car company has office near harbour of Catania, it might be easier for you to arrive there as you would not have to drive through the centre, and yet you are still very close to centre of city. If you plan to take any taxis negotiate price before with the drivers, you always need to lower their price there, it always gives us a good laugh when we visit - Do not trust Sicilians, they are nice friendly laid back people but would do anything for an extra penny

I would certainly spend a couple of nights in Taormina, the scenary is breathtaking and high class. Many tourist from northern Europe love this small city.

One suggestion, how about stopping at Taormina, visiting Etna etc before visiting the very south of Sicily and lastly Catania, that way you won't be repeating routes, and going south and then north again. Check out and plan your route on a map of Sicily before booking accomodation, so that you would avoid unnecessary extra driving. Nobody mentioned Messina, it is such a lovely medieval small city in Sicily.

As Leely mentioned, we started in Taormina which I'd do again coming off a long flight over several times zones. I'd also want to be at full capacity to take in Palermo (Leely, you packed an amazing amount in your one full day there).
A word on Taormina--touristy, yes, but not tacky. We tourists are all there, after all, for a reason. Taormina's job is to sit on her spectacularly sited balcony and look beautiful, and she does it very, very well. The looming presence of Etna makes for an interesting juxtaposition, a reminder that the carefree pleasures of Taormina can change in an instant.
Our stay in Modica gave us our best taste of modern Sicilian life. We liked it a lot. Ragusa Ibla is lovely but looks a bit like a stage set. Noto is so close to Siracusa/Ortigia that you just might as well stay there.
One night would be sufficient for Agrigento.
I join the chorus of those who strongly recommend time on Ortigia.
Do you have a specific reason for wanting to stay in Catania?
The exceptional hospitality and helpfulness of the Sicilians we met really enhanced our visit.

I disagree that Trapani is "quite far" from Palermo. It's true my bus took two hours to get to Trapani, but 40 minutes of that was getting out of Palermo, and 30 minutes was getting into Trapani - the problem was traffic not distance.

I also, strongly, disagree with skipping Siracusa - i.e. Ortigia - in favor of Taormina. Yes, Taormina has a great setting, but it doesn't rate more than one, or at the most two nights, unless you want to either shop, or just sit and stare at the the view. Ortigia, on the other hand, is a great place for wandering around, and has a "lived in" feel missing in touristy Taormina. When I went I had a choice of extra time in Ortigia or extra time in Taormina (which would have been logistically much easier) and I never for a minute regretted picking Ortigia.

This is so helpful, nit only for me, but for others planning a Sicilain trip.

Instead of two lodgings (one in Syracusa and one in the baroque villages), I am thinking of renting an apartment somewhere in the southwest for a week. I was thinking about possibly Ortigia, and making day trips from there. What do you think? I know some of you prefer the baroque towns- would that be a better base?

One benefit of traveling directly to Syracusa from Agregento is that we could go through the center and stop at Piazza Armerina- maybe stop for a night- and see the mosaics and nmearby ceramics. Thoughts?

We will only spend a night (maybe two) in Taormina before transferring to catania prior to our departure at 7:00 AM.

Syracusa and Ortygia are one and the same, the latter being the original island town. If you stay in a agriturismo such a Limoneto, you do not have to worry about getting out of the city when doing day trips.

Repeat: You might want to look at my trip report.