Christmas time in Sicily- what to expect will be open or closed Dec 24, 25 and 26th

Driving in Sicily is straightforward. No need to hire a driver.

Thank you I appreciate the quick reply!

Just looked up what is open during Christmas Holidays online. It seems that much is open with special holiday hours. There are Xmas Markets and Processions. Some smaller shops and cafes are closed on Christmas Eve because it is considered a Family Celebration. Of course, the Churches are Open. Have you checked the RS Sicily Tour for ideas on where to stay and things to see? Enjoy your trip!

If your jetlag tends to be manageable, I suggest flying straight to Palermo or Catania and staying there --- my theory is that you will feel some degree of lousy no matter where you stay so you might as well get to your destination. Plus, you are much more likely to find restaurants etc open in a city --- we did fine being in Bologna over Christmas a couple years ago and in Rome several years ago. That's been our experience being in Italy over Easter and national holidays, too.

Another reason to spend your first few days in one of these fabulous cities is that you wouldn't want to have a car then anyway. Plenty, plenty, plenty of things to see just walking around, such as the exterior of the cathedral in Palermo.

Driving in Sicily is just fine if you are used to driving elsewhere in Italy. We've spent about 6 weeks total driving around Sicily without any problems except we've learned to be a bit skeptical of google maps directions in and around towns and so we like to look at a paper map to see if there is a much simpler, safer, more obvious route that takes three minutes longer than google's shortcuts.

Thank you both, this is very helpful since you've both been there. Good point about the paper maps too. A recent google map directions for my neighborhood was insane, so fortunately I knew to override it!

I agree with much of the above. Take a taxi from PMO to the city center and enjoy the lovely city for a few days. You could easily stay there and use it as your base and never need a car.

But driving in Sicily is no big deal. I think the drivers are much better than the ones back home. If you can drive in Boston, you'll be aces. The trick is getting used to close spaces. Cars next to you will be closer, curbs and walls will be closer, parking will be much tighter. It'll stress you out at first if you're used to massively over-engineered roads in most of the states.

Honestly though, Palermo is probably a great place to spend Christmas

There is a train from Palermo airport to Palermo that we took which was cheaper than a taxi.

You do want to be aware of using goggle maps in Sicily. We were first told that by the guide for a tour we took to mt Etna. It doesn’t recognize staircases for example. In Palermo, we saw a woman backing up her car from a historical market, telling the other occupants that goggle maps took her this way! We found in Palermo that goggle maps would take us all sorts of ways (on foot) that might have saved a minute or two but occasionally put us into less desirable looking areas. We ended up using a map that I had copied from a guidebook.

Driving in the countryside is fine. I would avoid the cities. I would rent from the airport and head out from there.

We really liked Palermo and think it would be a great place to spend the holidays.

NYE many Italian restaurants have a special menu that's more expensive and requires reservations, we've skipped it the past few visits at New Years, just gotten pizza by the slice instead. There's a LOT of recommended, excellent street food in Palermo, so you would be able to buy something on the street as well.