Sicily for 1 week

What are your sightseeing interests? The major Greek sites are to the west. There are a bunch of very attractive Baroque towns near Siracusa (many people's favorite Sicilian city) in the southeast. The Villa Romana del Casale with its impressive mosaics is near the center of the eastern half of the island. Palermo, on the north coast, has lively markets, the best archaeological museum, the magnificent Cathedral at Monreale (on the outskirts, accessible by city bus), the Norman Palace (in the city) and the popular side trip to Cefalu. And I haven't mentioned Taormina (in the northeast) or Trapani/Erice (on the west coast).

You'll need to focus on just part of the island, but we don't have enough information to guide you.

You will have to focus on one part of Sicily and plan a return trip to see the rest. Fly into Palermo, spend a few days, then drive,fly east to Ortigia, the historic island adjacent to Siracusa.
Or fly to Catania, and go directly to Ortigia for your week. Take day trips to the Baroque towns of Ragusa, Modica and Noto. Return to Catania to fly back to Rome and then fly directly home.

After reading comments I realized I needed to find area in Sicily I wanted to see. Thinking of flying into Catania. Want to see Taormina, Mt Etna, Syracuse and Nota. Is it possible to use Catania as a home base and take day trips to these areas? Also, not sure if we should try to go to Palermo and spend day and fly out of there to Portugal. So much to see, not enough time! Would love thoughts about this. Also, hotels, restaurants, shopping etc. Thanks for all help.

Sounds like a good guidebook would be helpful. It's hard to convey much more than info in random bits in a forum like this.

On my opinion, you should stick to one side of the island. We flew into Catania, took a bus to Taormina, spent 3 nights there and took a day trip to Mt Etna.
We then took a trAin to Siracusa. We stayed in Ortigia (old historical section) for four nights. We didn’t go to Noto but could have. As it turned out, our last day was a gorgeous sunny day and the forecast was for rain so we just stayed put and enjoyed the day. But we could have taken a bus to Noto our last day.

That is 7 nights. You will have to return to see more. We had 15 nights and did not see all of Sicily.

You can day trip to Mt Etna from either Taormina or Catania. If clear weather it can be visible from Catania.

It's also possible to day trip from Catania to Taormina or vice versa. The two are quite different, Taormina being very spiffed up for tourists, beautiful and full of expensive boutiques--and tourists; it has a Greek theatre.

Catania is more workaday, but it has a WWII museum, an interesting market and a nice historic center around the cathedral.

I wouldn't want to day trip to Siracusa from Catania. Siracusa's historic Ortygia section deserves more time than that. You need to spend some nights in Ortygia so you can see the immediate area and take a day trip to Noto. Other nice Baroque towns in the area include Ragusa, Modica and Scicli.

Thank you for all the great ideas. Know this willbe my trip to Sicily. So many things to see! Deciding just to stay on the east coast.

By car, you could do this:

Day 1 - Arrive Catania, drive to Taormina via Castelmola

Day 2 - Etna wineries loop, back to Taormina

Day 3 - Greek theatre then on to Ortigia

Day 4 - Ortigia

Day 5 - To Ragusa via Noto

Day 6 - Ragusa - Modica - Scicli - Ragusa

Day 7 - Back to Catania

If you can get to Agrigento, would highly recommend the Valley of the Temples, especially at dusk.

Recommendations:

Emilio Sciacca winery, Mt. Etna

Bistrot du Monde, Taormina

La Locanda Dei Mori, Taormina

Rampa dal 1946, Ortigia

Trattoria La Pigna, Ortigia

Ristorante Ruga Reali, Agrigento

B&B Terrazze di Montelusa, Agrigento

Use Catania as a base to see Taormina and Mt. Etna, and use Siracusa/Ortigia as a base to see Noto. Siracusa is about an hour from Catania and Noto is about an hour from Siracusa.

You can use either Catania or Taormina as base to see Mt. Etna. Acraven above describes the differences very well. We chose Taormina and were happy with our choice, even though we are hardly upscale travelers.