Joining the Southern Italy and Sicily tours together Sept. 2023

You would need to book a multi-city ticket. Seattle to Rome, Naples to Palermo, Catania to Seattle. You can use Google flights to get an idea of providers.

Have you done back to back tours before? 24 straight days of touring might be a bit much for some people. I’ve recently done my first back to back tour and was surprised that I found that it was actually a bit long for me. Each person if different so it may be a match for you, but remember that touring can be tiring and going from one tour directly to another demanding.

Catania is actually a bigger airport than Palermo, so should be more flight options to the mainland.

Yes I'm a back-to-back veteran and know how tiring constant touring can be; that's the trade off of these two particular tours. Logistically Sicily is a no-brainer when previous tour ends in Naples. Other options calendar-wise has a week between tours which is too long for me. While open jaw flight reservation is a possibility as mentioned, but what about booking Rome round trip, and book the flights Naples->Palermo and Catania to Rome separately as a cheaper option?

Another option would be to look at booking international flight (SEA-FCO-SEA) and then booking the other flights separately and see how they price out. On our trip last spring we chose to book LAS-FCO-LAS because Alitalia was in the reorganization process and we didn’t want to get caught in that. We end our RS Sicily in Catania and flew out on the ITA 6 a.m. flight the morning the tour ended. It put us in to Rome early. I think it comes down to pricing it out and balancing that out with convenience.

You might see what frequent poster Mary from Reno did as they did these tours back to back with the Sicily one first.

I would do like Patty suggests -- buy the big transatlantic flights, and then separately purchase on EasyJet or whatever my way from the mainland to Sicily and back.

The legacy carriers will charge you an arm and a leg to do all that. Better to build in some time after you're done, fly back to Rome, have a day or two, and then catch your transatlantic flight there.

Thank you all for your timely and helpful responses! Love having this forum as a resource!

I just got back from the Southern Italy tour, and there were three or four couples who were headed to the Sicily tour when our tour ended.

The Southern Italy tour was very strenuous. A lot of walking every day and a lot of stairs. But a wonderful trip!

Just so you know, our tour ended on September 17th. It was very very hot the whole time, and the heat was tiring. Note that not everyone's hotel room had air conditioning, although we had no problems opening windows at night.

I'm doing 2 tours as well with a day in between. First tour ends Naples & then Sicily starts in Palermo the following day, ends in Catania. Easyjet does flights Naples > Palermo return & Naples > Catania return. With Easyjet, make sure you read all about the baggage limitations. Their price is roughly $70 US one way with a small (& I mean small) carry & 1 larger bag - dimensions are provided on their site. Option 2 - overnight ferry with sleeping berth (for either 2 ppl or 4 ppl), leaves Naples approx 8pm arrives Palermo approx 6:30am - approx $150 for 2 ppl one way. Option 3 - train from Naples to Palermo. Leaves Naples goes down to the toe of Italy, crosses at Messina & then train continues to Palermo. If you look for a fare on Euro Rail it's approx $70 pp one way. Go directly to the Trenitalia site & it's half the price - approx 9.5 hrs in duration. Go back to Naples from Catania by one of these options. In Canada, when you book "multiple" destinations, it's very expensive - that's why I'll be doing one of the 3 options above & will fly in & out of NAP.

Soooo helpful! Frankly looking at the little map of Sicily the Catania side of the island looked a little desolate. Silly me! Thanks all of you for the feedback and options to fill out logistics of the two tours. Gail-sometimes you want to take the 'scenic tour,' and your options caused me to reevaluate that idea. Really great feedback all of you!

you've gotten great advice about using local carriers for the flights to/from Sicily. check out ITA/Delta codeshares as well -- it is sometimes less expensive to book separately than create a multi-city itinerary even when using the same transatlantic carrier.
the Eastern side of Sicily is truly magnificent, with lots of different types of terrain and so much ancient history along with breathtaking scenery, so I wouldn't write it off!

on our first trip, a few years ago, we started in the east and end in Palermo, having to skip Western Sicily and Cefalu in the interest of time (13 nights) and on our upcoming trip next month, we'll fill in the blanks and still spend almost a week between Taormina, southeastern Sicily (Vittoria, Ragus) and Ortigia, for a total of 15 nights.
check out LaRosa Works for some interesting articles on Sicily and peruse the itineraries for their Sicily tours to get some more inspiration.