Sicily, Florence, Corsica itinerary

I have been to both Sardinia and Corsica and loved them both. Getting to Corsica from Palermo requires an Alitalia flight to Rome and another flight to Bastia. In 4 days, you could easily circumnavigate the island.
Day 1 - Take the seaside road from Bastia up the eastern coast of Cap Corse to Barcaggio and then head southwest toward Saint Florent and return to Bastia. The scenery and beaches are spectacular.

Day 2 - I would then drive through the center of the island to Marine de Porto with its beautiful beaches.

Day 3 - I’d drive south and visit Ajaccio heading down the coast road and the calanques of Piana to Bonifacio on the southern tip. Walk the harbor and visit the fortress on the top of the hill.

Day 4 - Take a boat trip in the morning to see the white chalk cliffs and the calanques from the harbor. Then drive up the east coast through Porto Veccio to Aleria. Turn inland and stop in the city of Corte and then head back to Bastia airport area for a flight the next day to Paris.

Calvi on the north end of the island is a well known beautiful resort area and in August will be crowded and expensive.

Corsica is not a large island but because of the mountains and coast, driving time is longer than it would appear on a map. PM me if you want any more info.

Thanks so much! Sounds like it will be difficult/time consuming to get to Corsica from Sicily. Maybe I can do it from Florence or nearby airport and then Sicily and then onto Paris from there?

Have you also been to Sicily. Not sure where to begin there or if my plan is a little crazy.
Thanks!!

Adore Corsica, its a stunning island,, friendly people and great food. So no sure what you have heard?

You've attributed your travel days to both the place you're leaving and the place you're heading to, which can give a very misleading impression of how much time you'll actually have at each stop.

I'm unclear on whether August 8 is the day you plan to leave the US or the day you land in Italy. The arrival day will probably not be worth much in terms of sightseeing because at least some of your group will be jetlagged and severely sleep-deprived.

Nearly every hotel change costs at least half a day. You have a lot that involve flights, so your time loss will be greater than that. This is how many full days you have at each stop:

Florence: 1 or 2
Tuscany: 6
Sicily: 6
Corsica or Sardinia: 3
Paris: 3 or 4 (only 3 if you fly home on Sept. 2)

Sicily is a large island with major attractions widely scattered. It really needs 2 weeks if you have a rental car, longer if you're trying to get around by public transportation. You can't efficiently cover the bulk of the island as you're trying to do in six days, nor can you do it comfortably from just two bases. Go to ViaMichelin to check the driving times of the day-trips you're planning.

In addition to the very inadequate time you're allowing for Sicily, you have a weather issue. It is highly likely Sicily will be miserably hot in August. I don't know how much better Corsica or Sardinia will be unless you get up into the mountains. Florence gets hot as well, but it won't match Sicily.

Thanks so much for all the feedback. We actually have done more moving from place to place in the last few years-driving though different regions of France, so I think we'll be ok with driving around Tuscany and then Sicily. BUT...that being said, we're trying to be better about packing too much into our trips. Do you have recommendations for a pared down version of the Sicily part...since a few of you think we're overextending?

Maybe staying to one coast or the other? Maybe we can do two days in Palermo with trips to Marsala, Cefalu and then back to the east coast for and the southeast (Siracusa, Ortigia, Noto, Ragusa and down to Marzamemi beach)? If I'm staying on the east coast, maybe Siracusa or Ortigia?

I like the idea of Corsica, but sounds like we'd need to head there BEFORE heading to Sicily bc of the flights (needing to originate in Rome).
Thoughts?

Palermo is a large city, and it takes time to move from sight to sight. It would be borderline-insane to drive into it, and even if you did that, the car wouldn't help you get around the city. So there's some travel overhead involved in simply getting yourself to Palermo unless that's your arrival airport and you take an expeditious form of transportation (not your own car) into the city. I think Palermo itself deserves at least two full days (3 nights) if you include Monreale, whose cathedral is, by consensus, the #1 Palermo sight. Unfortunately, it's not actually in Palermo. You can get to Monreale by bus, but it's more efficient by car--the car you shouldn't have while you're staying in Palermo. So Monreale is ideally visited when you head out of Palermo to go somewhere else.

Once you're at the Palermo train station (which may not be particularly near your hotel), Cefalu is an easy train ride. I haven't been to Marsala and have no idea how long a tourist might want to spend there. ViaMichelin estimates the drive at about 1-3/4 hours each way, but you have to allow time to obtain a rental car. A train to Marsala takes over 3 hours, so it's not a good option for a day-trip during a short visit to Sicily. Marsala and Cefalu are in totally different directions, so I can't imagine combining them in a single day-trip even if you were willing to spend 5+ hours in a car.

It's difficult to say what can be accomplished in "2 days", which I assume really means "2 nights". 2 nights is never 2 days. It's one day plus some hours--how many hours depending on where you traveled from on that first day. If you're considering 2 nights in Palermo, you certainly cannot do any sort of justice to that city, Monreale, Cefalu and Marsala.

All the time you have in Sicily could easily be spent just in this corner. You might be able to include Trapani/Erice or one of the Greek sites.

Siracusa/Ortygia and the Baroque towns are my favorite part of Sicily, but over on that coast you also have the gorgeous (but over-touristed) Taormina, which few people want to skip. It wouldn't be a relaxing pace, but I think you could see Siracusa, Ragusa, probably several other Baroque towns (Noto, Modica Scicli) and Taormina with six nights. I would want more, but I always want more.

Forgive me for repeating myself, but you are proposing to head to Sicily at the worst time of the year with about 1/3 the time you really need to see it reasonably well. Do you have no other, more attractive, options for this trip? Even if you apply all the Corsica/Sardinia time to Sicily, you'll only have 10 days there, and that's still not enough. So you'll have an overheated, rushed trip during which you're constantly aware of the things you'd like to see but don't have time for. For me, the constant time stress plus the weather would make for a disappointing trip. I had the weather to deal with (in June), but I wasn't particularly rushed. Even so, I have places I couldn't fit in.

I am pretty sure there are no flights from anywhere in Italy (even Rome) to Bastia. Maybe to Ajaccio Napoleon airport, although last year there were none because I checked when I was in Italy in July. Maybe next August you have better luck. I’ve gone to Corsica from Sardinia (via car ferry from Santa Teresa di Gallura, a 45 min journey). You could actually do the same. Santa Teresa is less than 2 hours from Olbia airport and there are plenty of flights from Italy to Olbia. Be aware that you must line up on the dock at least an hour or two before the ferry departs.
You have s lot on your plate.
Florence needs 3 nights.
Tuscan countryside: 4 nights is the very minimum.
Sicily: 4 or 5 nights each side (East and west). For both you need 9 or 10 nights min.
Sardinia is as big as Sicily. Not sure there are direct flights from Sicily to Olbia, but if you go to Olbia you can concentrate on the north of Sardinia, in 5 nights you can do for a quick taste. If you cross into Corsica from Santa Teresa give Corsica another 4 nights.
There are plenty of flights from Ajaccio to Paris. The problem is that if you rent the car in Olbia and return it in Ajaccio it’s a different country, so there are huge car drop off fees. You might want to rent a separate car in Corsica so you don’t have international drop off fees.

Thanks Roberto. No flights to Bastia but on 25 August Alitalia does have an FCO to Ajaccio - flight AZ302 departing 5pm, arriving 6pm.

So helpful (acraven, you're hilariously direct!! Love it).

So I'm not married to Sicily...we tend to pack a lot into vacations...like you, it's never enough for me! My husband, on the other hand is French...so of course, he thinks my American "go-go-go" even on vacation...is a bit much!

We're definitely in for Florence and Tuscany. I could def extend that portion and I'm open for alternatives. I was hoping for Greek islands...maybe Athens for a few days to see the greatest hits (again, I could spend forever there) and then do some island hopping and relaxing...but coordinating the flights from Florence to Athens and then to islands became a headache.

I basically need some beautiful cities/towns to visit with culture and architecture and I need some countryside and beaches for my hubby. As a Washingtonian, you'll know we're used to sickening heat and humidity in the summer, so we're not afraid of the heat. Which is what we were thinking by adding in Corsica or Malta.

We've spent the last few summers exploring France from end to end. Last summer it was Marrakech, Essouira and Imsouane, Morocco for a week, then south of France and Bordeaux region. Because we have to fly in and out of France (husband extends his trip to see family in the NW and I head home, having exhausted all my vaca time)..we have to fly in and out of Paris...and France needs to be incorporated. As if that's a terrible situation to have!!

Have booked a couple agriturismos in Tuscany for our stay...but still tracking flight prices (likely to buy this week if they dip back down)...so I'm open for recommendations and adjustments. Basically need some city/town culture exploration. beach time, countryside time.

So grateful for the help. It's been my dream to travel my entire life. Now that we have the means, I feel like I've got to see it all (thus, my over-ambitious travel itineraries)! Next year we'll try to coordinate for April/May or Sept/Oct. Just couldn't work it out this year.

Thanks!
M