Sicily in April.....where to stay before tour starts

I assume you're taking the RS tour. How much extra time do you have? An 11-day tour cannot begin to cover all of Sicily.

The RS tour starts in Palermo but gives you only a bit over one full day there, a chunk of which time is spent out at Monreale (which is fabulous). There's a lot the tour won't cover in Palermo, so I'd spend my extra time there if it was only 1 to 3 days. A day trip to Cefalu is easy by train. If you really prefer smaller towns to larger cities, you could stay in Cefalu rather than Palermo for your extra days, but my preference is to base myself in the places with more sightseeing options. There have been some positive comments on this forum about the area just west of Palermo; perhaps a day trip in that direction would also be possible; I just went straight from Palermo to Trapani, so I'm not familiar with the area in between.

If you have more than 3 extra days to fill, I'd be inclined to spend at least part of the time down in the southeastern corner of the island to see the Baroque villages of Ragusa, Noto, Modica and Scicli. That would mean flying into Catania, ideally, and there would be considerable extra transportation involved, so it comes down to whether you're OK with that. If that area intrigues you, extra time at the end of the tour would be logistically better, since the tour ends in Catania.

Yes...its the RS Tour...do you have a specific hotel that you would recommend right there in Palermo?
thank you!

Stay 3 of extra nights (2 full days) in Palermo, if you can. One day is not enough to see Palermo and Monreale with RS tour. If RS tour covers Monreale well, you can concentrate in the city to visit the places the tour does not cover. I think RS stays at the Ambasciatori hotel. Stay there so you don’t have to move later.

I can't recommend a hotel in Palermo; I stayed in an informal sort of accommodation which was OK for me but would be below the standards of others on this forum. (Plus I don't remember the name of it.)

I'm a fan of consulting the ratings and reviews on booking.com. You can't leave a review on that website unless you've actually stayed at the property.

Santuzza Maison de Charme is in a beautifully restored historic building. The location, right near the Cathedral, is central and convenient to everything in the historic center yet quiet and peaceful. Our host was helpful and kind. Breakfast was great. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay and highly recommend!

https://www.santuzzamaisondecharme.com/

I always arrive early for RS tours and, if at all possible, I add the extra nights at the first tour hotel - one less move and generally in a good location. You can find the name and contact information for the first hotel inside your tour account.

When we arrived early for our RS Sicily tour the Ambasciatori was full. We ended up staying at B&B Delle Vittorie and were very happy. It was the first real tourist season post-Covid, so some things were different, I.e. the way they set up breakfast, but the room was wonderful, the staff was so helpful and we were right in the heart of things on Via Makada. We walked with our luggage to the Ambasciatori.

We went to Sicily independently. The Rick Steves tour description for Palermo short changes the city in so many ways, skips many landmarks. Go a few days early and buy a good guidebook.

Rick now has a guidebook dedicated to Sicily. The first edition was published after I went to Sicily in 2015, but I assume Rick has done his usual comprehensive job of covering the places included in the book.