hello my fodorite friends !

Need some help with our Sicily itinerary ..

Reaching Sicily July 17th evening; Heading out July 21st evening.

We're planning to take the train from Naples to get into and out of Sicily.
Within Sicily, want to see Palermo, Syracuse, Naxos, Taormina, Cefalu .. basically as much as possible !

Should we stay in one place, rent a car and make day trips ? Or should we stay in different places each night ?

Any good hotel recommendations upto 150 euro/night ?
Which are the must see places in Sicily ?

Is 4 days enough for Sicily.. I can add maybe 1 more day if its worth it. Doing 4 days Venice, 3 days Florence, 10 days Rome, 3 days Naples for my first trip to Italy.

many thanks !

About two weeks would be nice for a superficial tour of the highlights of Sicily. Four days is clearly not enough to see the whole island well, but you can see one place well, or just a few places superficially. If you search for messages by the poster GAC you will find a lot of good information. Also search for RAR who took a recent trip to Sicily and covered quite a bit of ground and got a lot out of it.

Taormina is really lovely and well worth a visit, we stayed about 5-10 mins away on the coast at a great hotel - hotel olympo

You may be able to get some ideas from my fairly recent trip report:

http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34412340

I personally could easily spend 4 nights in Palermo alone. But, it sounds like you don't mind running around and having a busy vacation, so maybe do 2 nights in Palermo, with one day dedicated to all Palermo, and the other to see Cefalu as a day trip. I'm sure GAC would have some ideas about the public transport to get to Cefalu. I would then rent a car on the way out of Palermo and spend the next 2 nights in Taormina, which is very close to Giardini Naxos so you could do that as a side excursion. I would add 2 nights to stay in Ortygia (Siracusa). But realize this is only briefly skimming over the north/northeastern area of the island. You'll be missing the wonderful archaeologocal sites Segesta, Selinunte and the Valley of the Temples. Charlie41134 recently posted about a place in Palermo that sounds wonderful to stay at:

http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34422854

Sicily is worth any extra time that you can dedicate to it!

I'm not an expert on the public transportation, but I do know that it's very easy to get to Cefalù. The train from Palermo takes about an hour, barring any special problems. (When I was there, there were Fiat worker protests that blocked the train lines and many of the roads on many of the days. But the protesters took Sunday off as a day of rest, so I was able to see Cefalù.) Note that this train does not run often on Sundays.

Many thanks my dear friends .. your help is highly appreciated.

Hi-
I just spent a week in Sicily at the end of May. If you click on my screen name, you'll see my trip notes.
I think with your limited time, you'd do much better to rent a car and add a day, if possible. In 4 or 5 days you can see a lot if you push it, but you will spend a lot of time "in transit". Are you locked into your 10 days in Rome? If you could add on a few more days in Sicily, you could see the some of the greatest archeolgical ruins in the world.
Also, keep in mind you'll be there on a Sunday and that lots of places will be closed. I've been to Cefalu twice, unfortunately both times on a Sunday, and almost everything was closed. In Palermo, the big outdoor markets are closed on Sundays.
Have fun, Sicily is amazing!

Depends on what you want to do. If relaxing and enjoying a low key vacation is your idea of fun, then go to Taormina (assuming the swarms of tourists don't bother you). If you are more into seeing Sicily's history, I would say spend all 4 nights in Palermo, and go see Segesta/Monreale/Erice. If a mix of both is what interests you, go to Syracuse, where you can find plenty of pretty beaches to the south (Fontana Bianca is nice) and also a lot of history (archeological park and Syracuse itself).

Four days is a really short amount of time for such a big island. So try to keep that in mind as you try to plan. Hope this helps.

From Palermo Centrale to Cefalu, take any train. It's a 15 minute walk from the Cefalu Station to the Cathedral. Schedules at www.trenitalia.com