We are planning an 8 day trip to Sicily in October this year. Our thoughts are to stay in 2 different towns, and do day trips in a rental car from these bases. We'd love some input on where people would suggest these 2 town should be. We don't mind driving 1-2 hours to the various sites most days. We'll likely stay in air bnb's at these places. We're mostly interested in seeing the ancient/historical Roman/Greek sites, smaller quaint towns, interesting countrysides/ beaches and sampling some wonderful food.
Thanks for any input you can provide.
Posted by
Colorado Mountains, USA
8250 posts
That’s tough, because my two suggestions don’t include Taormina in the northeast, but basing in Trapani/Erice would give you relative proximity to can’t-miss Segesta, and beaches on the western edge. We stayed in Erice. Agrigento is another can’t-miss, so you could see it as you work your way towards Caltagirone, or see it as a daytrip from Caltagirone.
So that second base in Caltagirone gives you access to Agrigento temples, the Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina, and possibly Siracusa/Ortigia. Towns like Modica (do you like chocolate?) are reachable, too.
We had a rental car, but did a counter-clockwise circuit around Sicily, doing lots of 1 or 2-night stays at hotels and B&B’s, so we stayed in more places. But of you want only 2 bases, those are my recommendations. If you can squeeze in Taormina somehow, the ruins there are spectacular.
Posted by
OP
8 posts
Wonderful, thanks so much for the suggestions. Maybe we'll have to modify our 2 base plan and go for 3 so we're not doing so much driving back and forth. How many total days did you stay?
Thanks again for your response.
Sharon
Posted by
Colorado Mountains, USA
8250 posts
Sharon, this was December 2012, at Christmastime, so I don’t remember some of the precise details. We started the trip with a week in Rome, then flew to the Palermo airport - which is quite aways west of Palermo itself, and continued west to Erice, stopping at amazing Segesta enroute. I think we had just over a week (8 days ?!?), or maybe a couple days more, to tour Sicily before catching the car ferry from Messina back to mainland Italy for New Year’s and another week or so.
On a subsequent trip, I spent time in Palermo and Catania, which don’t have the Greek/Roman stuff you’re seeking, but did go back again to see the temples at Agrigento.
Posted by
Saint Paul, Minnesota
1718 posts
We just spent 3 hours seeing the Villa Romana and highly recommend getting there right when it opens at 9:00am. We had it pretty much all to ourselves (two other people and a school group) for an hour or so before it became full of bus tours —- we could tell, though, looking at the parking lot on our way out that it can get much, much busier in summer.