itinary including sicily and rome

Both are wonderful places, with many interesting things to see and explore. In late June, you will be hitting the busiest time with the most other travelers, and approaching the hottest temperatures as well. 10-11 days is probably about the minimum to include both Rome and Sicily, as they each merit more time than you have available.A little more information would be helpful, to all of us I imagine. Such as: where are you traveling from? how many people In your group? are you planning on 10 nights in Italy, or some other number? have you been to Italy before? where in Sicily does your travel partner have family? in general, what are your group's travel interests, such as history, art, food and wine, outdoor activities, and so on? Do you have a sense of your budget, at least something like very low cost, money is not a concern at all, or somewhere in between?

Thanks for the feedback Larry!

The city in Sicily is Cacomo, which I believe is a province of Palermo. We will probably flight out of Detroit. We are not high end travelers, I would say somewhere in the middle. What we really enjoy doing is getting into the culture of our destinations. We love to eat where the "locals" eat and do things off the beaten path. Only one in our group has been to Rome, We are Catholic and have a friend who is studying at the Vatican and thought is would be a good time to try to see him plus see family in Sicily. I am guessing the best way to travel from Rome to Sicily would be by plane. My husband travels to Europe frequently for business, and I have gone with him a few times, but unfortunately Italy is not include in his work area. We are really open to any suggestions and they are greatly appreciated

You could fly into Palermo, spend six nights in Sicilia, fly to Roma for the rest of your time and then fly back to the U.S.

Near Palermo, you could visit Monreale, Cefalu, Segesta, Trapani, Erice, perhaps a night or two in Agrigento.

OK, I'll go first, but there are various regulars here on the forum who know both Rome and Sicily better than I do. It seems like you are our Rick Steves type of travelers, mostly past the back-packing, youth-hosteling type of travel, but also not much into high end, pricey resorts and money-is-no-problem travel. We like to experience the culture along with the famous sites. In Sicily, it sounds like you are referring to Caccamo, which is an ancient town from the 11th century, highlighted by a castle, which is about 45 minutes driving time from Palermo, the congested capital of Sicily with about a million people, with many wonderful and diverse sites. You can google Caccamo and learn a lot more. And of course, Rome is Rome, and the Vatican lies within it. Sicily is a big and very diverse island, in terms of topography, culture, history, food and wine, and one can easily spend three weeks or more in Sicily and only feel like you have visited the highlights. So, with limited time you would have to choose carefully just how much to include. Same really for Rome, many, many diverse things to experience, but all in the single Metropolitan area. Since you have contacts in both places, will those people be involved in helping to plan your time there, take you around or even host you? Given 11 days, a natural division might be 4 in Rome and 7 in Sicily, but you might want otherwise, or to include additional stops, which would be difficult without short-changing everything. Certainly the way to travel between Rome and Palermo is by plane. Flying time is probably about 75 to 90 minutes, and there should be various airlines that do that, Alitalia and some discount airlines. It would save you time and maybe money to either start or end your trip at the Palermo airport, so that you do not need to spend nights in Rome at both ends, and a through ticket would protect you against missing your connecting flight due to delays, the airline would get you where you are going. It would be good to start soon with a guidebook for Rome and one for Sicily. The RS books do a great job helping to plan a visit to Rome, but unfortunately there is no RS book covering Sicily. Lonely Planet and DK Eyewitness are good ones, among others. That's a start. How many people in your travel group?

Please take note of Larry's advice about flights. You want to fly Detroit > Palermo (you'll change planes somewhere), then Palermo > Rome > Detroit. You will want to arrive in Rome fairly early in the day so that if there are delays, there will be later flights that day to Palermo. You need to fly on a single ticket. If you buy the Rome-Palermo-Rome segment separately, you risk missing your connecting flight in Rome (whether it's to Palermo or Detroit) and will have no recourse. You can book open-jaw into Palermo and home from Rome (f Sicily is first) or into Rome and home from Sicily (Rome first stop) and buy separate tickets with any airline for the flight in the middle of your trip.

I suggest doing something similar to what we are doing in April. We are booked for the RS Sicily tour that runs from 4/10 - 4/20. We are flying to Rome, staying for a few days, and then flying on to Sicily. At the end of the tour, we are flying back to Rome, staying overnight, and then continuing home. Flying from the US to Sicily usually involves two connections. On the way home, you would have to take a very early flight leaving from Sicily. You will have more flight choices and probably lower prices if you fly round trip to Rome and add on additional flights to and from Sicily.

My family did a similar trip, but from Boston. We flew into Rome and spent 5 nights there seeing the all the usual sites i.e., forum, Vatican, Rick's night walk. We also did a day trip to Tivoli to see Villa d'Este & Hadrian's Villa (Context Rome tour, expensive but worth it). We then took the 7AM fast train to Naples for pizza and Pompeii, and took the overnight Ferry to Palermo the same day. (Looking back, we wished we had spent one night to see more of Naples. We also wish we had unlimited vacation time!) The Ferry was wonderful; sunset Views of Naples /Capri, a sunrise view of Palermo, and a cost effective way to travel by combining it with an overnight stay in cabins with beds and showers. We took the ferry on a Friday night and many locals were going home to Palermo for the weekend. We didn't see any tourists. We rented a car and based our Sicily stay in Cefalu, a beautiful seaside town. If your'e beach people, you can tour all day and still hit the beach at 4 or 5 pm for a few hours to rest and cool off. It's hot in June, the days are long and no-one eats dinner before 9 pm. We flew out of Palermo, via Rome, back to the states. Have a wonderful time on your trip!