Hello,
From what I've read on SlowTrav driving in Sicily is more of a challenge than in other parts of Italy.
We - a party of four - are planning to drive from Palermo to a rental house near Acireale.
We are picking up a car at the railway station in Palermo and returning it at the airport because I figured out that getting out of the city center will be easier than returning to it.

Am I right? And could you recommend the easiest way out from the station to E90?

Is GPS helpful in navigating through Sicily? I consider renting such a system but I am concerned that with instructions in Italian (and my relatively poor Italian skills)it won't be very helpful.

And finally, what is the best road map of Sicily?

I would be grateful for recommendations/advice.

Andrzej

Driving is actually relatively easy in Sicily. You will need these tools:
The Michelin map # 565--covers all of Sicily.
Learn to use www.viamichelin.com to get precise routings.
Good luck--you will love Sicily.

You will find a lot of information about maps on this site, here is an example. I have ordered maps from TrekTools and their service was very good.

Over several years I've driven throughout Sicily, and I agree with Bob that it is about the same there as the rest of Italy -- nothing unique. All cities can be challenging, and Messina, Catania and Palermo are no exceptions. Countryside is relatively easy, but be aware that even small towns have traffic cameras -- and tickets are expensive.

Signs were pretty good -- however in Sicily they have not bought into the concept that an up-pointing arrow means straight ahead. (This is hard to explain -- just keep it in mind when your common sense says go straight and there's a sign that looks like it's pointing left or right!)

We recently used GPS in Germany and Austria and it was worth its weight in gold. We speak no German at all, and all instructions were in English. I assume it would be the same in Italy. Getting lost is fun when you have time to spare -- but this isn't always the case.

Sicily is fantastic. Enjoy.

The only part of Sicily driving I found more challenging was driving in the smaller towns. In many cases, Noto, Modica and that area, the highways went right through the towns. The roads became very narrow and could hardly handle two cars. Add to that a parked car or a delivery truck and it can get a bit tricky and confusing and more than once I asked "Do I have enough room?". The rental car mirrors could be folded in from within the car (I'm sure this is a common feature in euro rentals) and was used many times. We refered to it as putting out or taking in the wings.

We used via michelin and found very litle trouble getting around. The signs that appeared to be pointing left or right were a challenge. Especially in a roundabout with 6 converging roads. They really mean "straight ahead".

You will hve no trouble getting into and out of the airport. It is well marked.

Enjoy,
jb

quote:

Signs were pretty good -- however in Sicily they have not bought into the concept that an up-pointing arrow means straight ahead. (This is hard to explain -- just keep it in mind when your common sense says go straight and there's a sign that looks like it's pointing left or right!)

I know what Joseph is talking about and many first time drivers are fooled into thinking that a straight arrow pointing to the left means "turn left", when it most frequently means "take the road IMMEDIATELY to the left of this arrow" which is generally the road straight ahead.

These signs are different from signs that instruct you to turn. An arrow that tells you to turn left will have a curve to the left in the arrow itself. see the image below.

I agree that rural driving is pretty simple and driving in the cities can be a challenge. Downtown Catania was my first driving experience in Italy and it was exciting!

If you come from Palermo on the Autostrada through the center of Sicily, you will be able to bypass Catania on the Tangenziale di Catania. It will lead you right to the Autostrada Messina-Catania, and there will be an ALT Statzione about 1 Km past the last Catania exit (ultima uscita = last exit) where you push a button to pick up your toll ticket for the Autostrada Messina-Catania. (I don't recall any tolls on the A-19 Autostrada Palermo-Catania) The exit for Acireale is the first exit after you get on the Autostrada Messian-Catania. (about 6.5 Km)

One of my rules for driving in Italy is - If you see a sign pointing to your destination and you begin to follow that way, don't begin to second guess yourself. Keep on driving without making any turns until you see the next sign pointing to your destination (even though you might want to say to yourself, "this can't possibly be the way")

Also if you are trying to leave a town and you see a sign "Tutti le direzione" (lit. "all the directions"), follow it and it will ultimately take you to a road that will lead to your destination.

quote:

And finally, what is the best road map of Sicily?

The tourist information office at the Catania airport gave me a really good map of the area around Catania. I bought a good map for the rest of the island.

Generally, though the rental car maps are good only if you are staying on or close to autostrade. (Europcar maps are better than Hertz maps) If you want to travel on smaller roads, get a map will a scale of 1:250,000 (1 inch ~ 4 miles +/- )or, even better, 1:200,000 (about 3.15 miles to the inch) A road atlas of Sicily with that scale is what I would buy....an atlas is more manageable in a car.

I've been to a number of parts of Italy, and in my opinion, driving in Sicily was the craziest of all. Well, the urban areas of Sicily, anyway. Once away from the main towns, it was not much different than other parts of Italy. The rural areas are great.

Note that we did NOT drive in Palermo, although we stayed there for several days. I would see no difficulty driving through on the Autostrada, but I'd draw the line at driving in to the city center, unless it was very off hours. But maybe that's just me. I'd rate it as considerably worse than either Rome or Florence.

For travels to other parts of the island, we did the rental car pickup/dropoff at the airport. We took an airport bus shuttle to the Palermo train station (which was near our Palermo hotel) and it was easy and inexpensive. There's also a train that runs between the Palermo station and the airport, but I had heard mixed things about its reliability. I had heard from locals that it was much improved. Still, we took the very nice shuttle bus.

We did use GPS and it was fantastic. Specifically we used a program called PC Navigator, run on a very small tablet PC with a USB GPS antenna. It never failed us. Before the trip, I set waypoints to all the places we would be staying as well as sights we were planning to see. When we were off to see something, I'd set that waypoint as the destination. If we decided to detour to check out something interesting along the way, the program would recalculate. At the end of the day we would tell it to take us back to our hotel from wherever we ended up. It provided quite the sense of freedom and felt like we had a local guide in the car.

In terms of accuracy, it was OK. Once or twice it wanted to take us down very small questionable dirt roads, and we just said "no" and kept on going by. But then it would recalculate and find us a route more to our liking. Once it told us to head down a driveway-looking road, VERY narrow and not one that I would have chosen. We decided in favor of adventure and it turned out it went through and was a lot of fun. I found out later in the trip I could set the program to "truck mode" which kept the routing on more major roads, but not necessarily the shortest.

The program gave the usual "turn right, turn left" commands with a nice British accent. I think the program comes out of England. It runs on any laptop as long as you have an external USB GPS antenna (around $40 or so on eBay). The map database covers most of Europe I think.

Garmin also has some nice GPS units, as long as you get the European mapset. Once you're experienced driving in Europe with a decent GPS, you'll wonder how you ever got by with just maps.

Of course we backed up the GPS with a paper map. The Touring Club Italiano 1:200,000 Sicilia map was quite good. I think we got it from Amazon.

quote:

And could you recommend the easiest way out from the station to E90?

If you use http://viamichelin.com and chose Palermo Centrale as the street address in Palermo and Acireale as your destination, it will show you a route from the station to E90.

HOWEVER, it appears to me (from looking on Google Earth and from Google maps) that the road it tells you to take (and the one you ultimately want to be on to reach E90), Via Oreto, is one-way in the wrong direction for about the first 700 meters. You will want to take a parallel street, Via Francesco Paulo Perez to Via Bergamo, turn left and and then turn right on Via Oreto, which will take you to the E90.

Hope this helps.

quote:

Originally posted by Fibonacci:

quote:

Signs were pretty good -- however in Sicily they have not bought into the concept that an up-pointing arrow means straight ahead. (This is hard to explain -- just keep it in mind when your common sense says go straight and there's a sign that looks like it's pointing left or right!)

I know what Joseph is talking about and many first time drivers are fooled into thinking that a straight arrow pointing to the left means "turn left", when it most frequently means "take the road IMMEDIATELY to the left of this arrow" which is generally the road straight ahead.

These signs are different from signs that instruct you to turn. An arrow that tells you to turn left will have a curve to the left in the arrow itself. see the image below.

The sign you posted means a turn is coming up real soon now. Think of it being two signs . There is the straight part of the arrow and then the turn part. The turn now sign would just point in the direction of the turn.

Not sure what the rental companies are charging for GPS rental these days but you could buy one in Italy for 100 Euros and up.

I recently bought a Garmin Nuvi 770, which is loaded with both European and U.S. maps, for $289. Sounds like a better value than rental or 100E for an Italian GPS, since you can use it at home as well. (Assuming you live in the U.S.)

Except for Palermo and Catania, driving in Sicily is not a problem if you have driven in other parts of Italy. I would pick up the rental at the airport; we picked ours up at the train station and got lost leaving town (but we didn't have GPS then). The airport shuttle is as easy as a taxi to the train station, and it picking up the Autostrada as you drive out of the airport is straightforward.

The general rule that I've taken for the signs is that if there's a sign on the right side of the road, at the intersection, pointing left, it means to go straight (ideally the sign is at a slight angle). The signs indicating that you should turn left are on the left side.

I was only in Sicily in 1974 and what I remember from then (as a navigator) is that there were blue signs to Palermo that meant going by the old road; we wanted to take another route to join the autostrada.

Thank you very much everybody for great info.

It is very useful.

Andrzej

Andrzej -

My wife and I spent the last two weeks in October in Sicily. This was my third trip back to Italy, since living there for more than two years as a student in the late 1970's. For the first time I rented a car.

We arrived in Catania, got the car at the airport, and drove to the center of town to meet an acquaintance without much difficulty. We headed up to Taormina and had an eye-opening experience with the very narrow streets. Thereafter, the driving was certainly doable. There were only a few points where we could not decide what the signs meant, but we recovered without much trouble. The autostrade were actually quite nice.

Our itinerary took us from Taormina, to the Aeolian islands, Siracusa, and Bolognetta (near Palermo). We took side trips to Noto, Modica, Agrigento, Cefalu, Erice, and Caltagirone. The last included some fairly primitive, winding roads highlighted by a stop to allow a small herd of cattle to cross in front of us. I do admit that we did not do any driving within Palermo, only through the city. Our B&B host was nice enough to spend a day taking us around Palermo and I am glad he did given the chaotic traffic.

Try not to rent a very large car if you will be in smaller towns. We were upgraded to a Saab station wagon from a smaller Mercedes. At first I thought that was a good idea but it would have been a lot easier in some of the towns with a smaller car.

Enjoy your trip.

Hi Andrzej:

We also spent two weeks in Sicily in October. We rented from Autoeurope and a Garmin GPS was included. It was very helpful for most of the trip, although, a good measure of common sense is required. In Modica, the GPS directed us down an impossibly narrow street. We were able to reattach the side mirror and I don't think anyone was the wiser! My brother-in-law mechanic is a very handy traveling companion.

I drove in Palermo on Sunday (recommended...no traffic) and during the week (much crazier), and don't really suggest it unless you have a need to arrive at the rail station. You can get to the A from the train without going through the center, though. I also wouldn't drive into Catania during the week if you can avoid it. Aside from that, I was surprised at the high quality of the highway system in Sicily and have driven in many parts of mainland Italy. Returning a rental car at Palermo airport is a breeze (although a bit of a walk from the terminal...there is a shuttle, but we chose not to wait for it).

We enjoyed a wonderful Sicilian lunch in Acireale at All' Antica Osteria (via carpinati, 34); stumbled on it by accident while looking for a place in a guide book that had closed. I like to wander down alleys and All'Antica seemed quite popular with the local businessmen for lunch. A nice, moderately priced meal...145 euro for 6 of us (lots of plates...excellent fish and the antipasti buffet was quite good...plus three carafes of the house vino!).

We picked up a large scale map of Sicily by Bonechi after we arrived and it was more than adequate and very well used.

Have a great time...Sicily is a unique experience. Go to the top of Etna if you can. And don't miss Castlemola above Taormina...we took a cab (don't drive up there!) and it was definitely worth it.

Best,

Bill

No ZTL in Sicily?

And what is the train situation, main cities only?

Driving in Sicily was EASY. We were pleasantly SHOCKED actually :-) Things are very, very relaxed..picked up our car in Palermo with no issues at all (thanks everyone who suggested it!)...we were thinking something Naples-like (which we do...but hate it for sure)...not at all. Don't worry :-) h

We drove for 1 week in Sicily: Catania to Ragusa to Palermo. The driving was better than we expected. The GPS from Hertz was a disappointment because the directions were in English but the street names were read by an Italian, and with many street names including numbers, it was difficult to follow. Also, the GPS took us to dirt lanes 3 times when we were in the country side and through the middle of crowded cities when we could have driven around them. After a few days we relied on signs instead of the GPS.

Driving on the autostrada here in Sicily is easy. It's when you get into the towns that things can get a bit hairy, especially in places like Palermo and Catania. I've lived here for two years now, and will still not drive in either of those two cities! Other than that, though, I drive everywhere with no problems. I use the Garmin Nuvi (can't remember which model number), and have never had any problems. Just make sure that you upload the latest maps.

Like someone else suggested, it would be much easier for you to pick your rental car up at the airport instead of at the train station. It's much easier to get in and out of there than from the city center of Palermo.