Hotels on Rick Steeve’s Sicily tour

The hotels on this tour, as on many RS tours, range from the quirky to the downright gorgeous. Most of them are rather small, and not chains. One of the hotels we stayed at on that tour was in an ancient building with lots of twists and turns, corridors opening off of off staircases - we loved it! Another was actually a working convent that rents rooms. And we loved that one, too. We stayed there twice (on different tours) and it was lovely. On our first visit there we had a huge room, bright and sunny, with ocean views. On our second stay, we had a small room, no view, but squeaky clean and perfectly adequate. The hotel you'll probably stay at in Palermo is nice, and has an amazing rooftop terrace where breakfast is served. The elevator doesn't go all the way up, but it's a great place for breakfast or lounging.

Hotels change from tour to tour, by the way. There is no one single set hotel list for a given itinerary. All the hotels are clean and safe, with a generous breakfast included.

Edit to add: After reading your post about luggage, I feel I must come back to add: While a few of the hotels in which we've stayed on our 12 RS tours have been luxury class, most of them have not. Clean, safe, convenient to sightseeing.

We took the tour in February and the hotels were great. Above what we've seen on other RS tours. Of course, they don't always use the same hotels, and everyones' taste is subjective.

But you must read and understand Rick's criteria for picking hotels. The primary factor is location since you will be walking to most sights and to restaurants, etc. They are not luxury or business class hotels. They look for hotels with character not services. Sometimes you have to walk a fair distance with your bags to the hotels, since a bus can't get around narrow older streets easily. Sometimes bathrooms can be tiny with small showers. The starting hotel for our tour (and I think most if not all) is the Hotel Ambasciatori in Palermo. Look it up and see.

These are not pampered handholding tours. Again, read all the descriptions carefully. Oh, and seeing your other post, you carry your own bags, and although these hotels all had small elevators, thats not always the case. No bellboys.

Although I always buy Rick's guide(s) before a trip, we would not take one of his tours because some of the hotels involve lots of steps and no elevator. We normally travel on our own, so have no problems handling our own luggage, but do need to stay in hotels with elevators-I'm saving my knees for stairs while sightseeing.

The hotels do vary, but they are usually basic hotels-some with quirky aspects. I actually love the RS tours because they don't stay in cookie-cutter American-style hotels. That being said, some cities don't have the mom and pop B&B's and we've stayed in mainstream hotels. But the six flights of stairs up to my attic room in Bacharach was one of the highlights of my GAS tour. There has been weak A/C and strong A/C. You just have to go with the flow, hotel-wise.

Given his other question and statement -- "If I have to handle my own luggage, it is deal breaker." I would conclude that the RS tour's hotels may not be acceptable. A RS tour may not be your cup of tea. I think a different tour company would probably work better. Our experience with Odysses Small Group tours would work much better for you. We did have to carry our luggage from the door of our room to the luggage stand in the room and, of course, back to the door when we left. And a few times the luggage was shipped ahead and placed in the room prior to our arrival.