RS tour Question- feedback from those that have taken the Sicily tour and Southern Italy tour

Hi Lisa, just throwing in a 2-cent comment before you hear from the people who have taken both tours. It looks like your post-tour locations are focused on water destinations, mostly. I would tend to say the South Italy tour already has several days where you are enjoying both coasts, so I would pair your post-tour choice with the Sicily trip.

Lisa, we’ve only taken the Sicily tour and loved it. Lots of great food, beautiful scenery, historical sites from Greece and Rome. On top of that great gelato and a fantastic tour guide. The downside was it’s a little harder to get to and especially return, but your post tour plans will make the return connections easier.

Mary

We've been on the South of Italy tour and are going on the Sicily tour in 2 weeks.

Loved the South of Italy tour. Great places, great fellow travelers and our guide Catherina Moore was a cook, as am I, so was particularly interesting to me. I am not a city person but I do enjoy Rome. The Village Italy tour is also excellent

Sicily is a bit of a pain to get to. We are coming from Boston and have to fly Lufthansa with a 5 hour layover in Munich. Lufthansa has a 17.8lb carry-on bag limit which is a bit tricky.

Our RS Best of Eastern France ended in Aix last spring. It was ok but I am not sure I would go out of my way to go there with so many other lovely places in southern France.

We’ve done both and loved both. Part of what makes giving advice difficult is that we added several days at the beginning of both tours. For us, having the extra time in Palermo may have influenced how much we loved it. Overall, Sicily is still so unique and we were impressed by its extensive history - every historical group seems to have visited! Your question really made me think about our memories.. the temple at Segesta, walking down through Agrigento’s Valley of the Temples, the salt flats and the remnants of the Carthaginians near Trapani (where we had lunch in a garden), the intricate mosaics at Villa Romana del Casale, we fell in love with Ortygia, visiting Mt Etna, and walking down in a small crater, then sitting on the hotel terrace in Taormina and seeing Etna in the distance…loved it all. And the food was fabulous.

The Southern Italy tour had its own magical places, and the itinerary has changed since we took it. In 2019, the tour stayed in Positano, but that stay has changed (I think that’s a good thing). Matera was especially fascinating, we really enjoyed the visit to the Buffalo farm, the best part of the Amalfi coast for us was Ravello, Pompeii was incredible and had such a great guide, and we didn’t anticipate loving Naples as much as we did.

Ironically, we had the same great guide for both tours. You really can’t go wrong with either.

Thanks for the tips everyone! I did notice, too, that Sicily is not easily accessible flight-wise, for me, either.

All of the memories posted here make each tour sound fabulous!

Jean, your tip about many beach locations on the South Italy tour was a good one- along with Nice and Villefranche-sur-Mer potential locations for my own travels after the tour it may add up to too many beaches on one trip! Last, I found it interesting that one commenter didn’t find Aix de Provence all that memorable. For my after-tour independent travels, I wanted to visit a couple places on the French Riviera and then I got the idea to take train to one easily accessible (by train) location in Provence and came upon Aix de Provence. It seems to have a fabulous market and lots of great scenery, direct access by train from Nice, the Cézanne museum,and it appears that there are also quite a few day tours available based from Aix to other local villages. It might be nice to slow down and relax a bit after the busy RS tour. So I’m still researching a town in Provence that meets my criteria. I would prefer not to drive and just take local transportation or local tours to other towns. Thanks for all of the great input! I also don’t plan on doing a complete deep dive (haha in more ways than one :) in the French Riviera and Provence- maybe just pick 3 places and plan on returning to this area at some other time. The majority of my trip will be on the RS tour, but since I’m already in Europe….Nice to extend the trip a bit and visit another location that I haven’t travelled to- just for a taste of it!

Lisa, I really loved my time at the French Riviera and would love to go back again! Here’s what I was able to do during my five days there. (It’s about halfway through the trip report.)

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/our-combined-solo-couple-vacation-in-france-2019

Hi Lisa

I have not taken either of those tours, but we recently visited some of the places included in both the Southern Italy tour and the Sicily tour. Here is my trip report. https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/trip-report-february-march-in-italy

I have been to many of the Greece tour locations on several independent Greece trips.

So. As you've already heard, you're a winner either way. But I would ask myself if there will be too much "Greek temples" overload after doing the Greek tour this fall. I would ask myself if I will benefit from seeing more Greek culture in Sicily or if I am one of those folks who will get kinda bored after just being in Greece. :)

Full disclosure here: I LOVE Greece. And I LOVED Paestum. And I LOVED Sicily. So really, I'm no help at all, am I?

Sicily is going to bring your previous tours into full circle. Many of the same cultures rotated through Spain, Greece and Sicily. Certainly Paestum too. So there is some overlap in the foods, architecture, personalities, etc. Great food, wonderful people, beautiful scenery.....Enjoy, whichever one you decide on!

Lisa, just a thought on travel. We actually booked the same basic flights for both trips, international from home to Rome and back. We had a voucher than needed to be booked before we had decided on our tour dates, so we ended up booking our Sicily tickets separately on ITA. On the outbound leg we overnighted at the Rome airport and took a morning one-way flight to Palermo. After the tour it was a one-way ITA flight out of Catania.

With the Southern Italy ticket we took the train from Naples, after an extra day, back to Rome and had some extra days before flying home.

Have done both tours and the Sicily tour knocked SOIT off its throne of best RST (out of 8) I have taken. Italy is a peninsula and Sicily is an island so water side locations are most definitely in the mix on each fantastic tour. I think you will have a wonderful contrast and compare to the French Riviera and will likely appreciate the far less thronged (depending on time of year) Vieste beaches on the Adriatic. Each tour has tremendous variety in experiences, sights, food and wine and you truly can't go wrong with either choice. Sicily is such a crossroads and its history so fascinating in the blending of the different peoples and kingdoms that have ruled the island. Testa o croce!

I faced this decision last year and chose the Sicily tour. My reasoning came down to picking the one I felt would be harder to do (same or similar places) with public transit. For the Southern Italy tour almost everywhere they go is reachable without too much trouble using trains and buses. The exception on that tour is Vieste, which I have visited by car and thought was beautiful. while I've driven in Europe solo it's much easier to do with two people, one focused on driving and the other watching for parking, ZTL signs, handling directions, etc.

Getting around Sicily by public transit is more difficult, and some of the things like the vineyard lunch or salt works visit would probably not be possible for a solo traveller. Overall I thought the tour was good but I enjoyed the Greece tour (which I took a few years ago) a bit more. I liked Athens more than Palermo & Catania. A side tip for your Greece tour - the Great Courses has a course "Great Tours: Greece and Turkey, from Athens to Istanbul" and ten or so of the lectures were great prep for the trip. Their courses are expensive at full price but this one is on sale right now, and it turned out we were able to borrow it from our local library.

On the other hand if you do decide to take the Southern Italy trip, instead of going to France afterwards you might want to consider staying in Italy and visiting Puglia. It has beautiful beaches and towns (Trani, Lecce, Gallipoli, etc) and you can get to Bari or Lecce from Naples via train or bus. Travel within Puglia to most places can be done via train or bus; not as fast as having a car, but doable.

Thank you VERY much, everyone, for your valuable advice and also the links to the trip reports! I am going to read them now, looking forward to it!
So much great information and food for thought! I appreciate all of the thoughtful replies! I’m still mulling everything over and haven’t made a final decision yet. It helps to have all of the feedback!!

Hi Lisa,

My husband and I have taken both tours and enjoyed them both, so it's hard for me to choose one over the other. The highlights of South Italy for me were Matera (the caves), the island of capri, and the lunch at the buffalo mozzarella farm. Sicily had two great lunch feasts and Taormina was really interesting, and of course Palermo was a great experience. It's hard for me to rank one above the other.

Good luck, I don't think that offers you much help, other than to say that someone who went on both enjoyed both immensely. We've had 4 RS tours so far (the other two being BOI and Eastern France) and next month is Village Italy. Right now we're trying to decide on a tour for 2025 - maybe Andalucia or Greece?