At this point, you've probably noticed that we absolutely love Italy. We've gotten to the point that anytime we even think about Italian food, we somehow end up booking another trip to Italy. Sicily had long been on our wishlist of places to visit, and we had very high expectations going into the trip. And while there were many things we really enjoyed about Sicily, overall, it just didn't have the same spark for us as other places we've visited in Italy (we're looking at you Puglia, Piedmont, Umbria, and the Dolomites!).
While we may not be desperate to return to Sicily immediately, we still think it's a beautiful place to visit (plus, tons of other people love it, so maybe you will too!). They have some of the clearest water we've ever swam in, the Trapanese pesto pasta is to die for, the secluded beaches are something out of a movie, and did someone say €3 aperol spritz?!
Top 3 Must-Do’s for a Southern Italy Roadtrip Itinerary
Bike around the island of Favignana
Hike the Zingaro Nature Reserve
Enjoy a beach day in San Vito Lo Capo
Duration: 7 nights
Best Time to Go: May through October
We went in mid-September which was perfect as the weather was still warm, most places were not crowded, and we found great deals on hotels!
Table of Contents
Western Sicily Roadtrip: Itinerary at a Glance
Day | Activities | Night |
Day 1 | Arrive at Palermo airport. Take the train into downtown and explore the city for the afternoon. | Palermo |
Day 2 | Explore Palermo in the morning, then pickup your rental car and drive to Gratteri. | Gratteri |
Day 3 | Drive down to Cefalù in the morning and stay for lunch. Either hang on the beach in Cefalù or go back to Gratteri for the afternoon. | Gratteri |
Day 4 | Drive 2.5 hours to Trapani. Spend the afternoon exploring the main town of Trapani. | Trapani |
Day 5 | Take the ferry to Favignana, rent a bike, and explore the island all day. | Trapani |
Day 6 | Drive to San Vito Lo Capo and spend the day at the beach. | San Vito Lo Capo |
Day 7 | Hike the Zingaro Nature Reserve. | San Vito Lo Capo |
Day 8 | Drive just over 1 hour to Palermo Airport, drop off your rental car, and head off on your next adventure! |
Just the Facts
Palermo:
Stay: Anywhere in the historic center, ideally close to the Praetorian Fountain. Palermo has tons of well priced hotels and Airbnbs to choose from.
Eat: Best Restaurants in Palermo
Corona Trattoria: Our favorite dinner in Palermo. Family-owned, outside the tourist area, feels higher end but prices were mid-range. The vongole was fantastic.
Osteria Mercede: Another great option outside the tourist area. This one is very seafood focused.
La Galleria: Great spot for lunch and nice outdoor seating. Close to the tourist spots but surprisingly high quality food.
Cappadonia Gelati: Amazing gelato on one of the main streets in Palermo. Get the gelato in served a broiche.
Cannoli: Incredible cannolis! You can build your own, picking the shell, filling, and toppings.
Drink: Best Bars in Palermo
Enoteca Picone: Very nice wine bar close to Corona Trattoria. Massive selection of wines and very good quality charcuterie boards.
Bottega Monteleone: Loved this spot for apertivo. It's a cute wine bar with outdoor seating on a quiet street off the tourist area.
Goccio: Great cocktails in Kalsa neighborhood
dal Barone: Cute wine bar in Kalsa neighborhood
Gratteri/Cefalù
Stay: Gratteri Resort
Eat: Best Restaurants in Gratteri/Cefalù
Restaurant at Gratteri Resort (Gratteri)
Mas Que Nada (Cefalù)
Enoteca Le Petit Tonneau (Cefalù)
Trapani/Favignana
Stay: Residence La Gancia
Eat: Best Restaurants in Trapani
Ristorante Antichi Sapori: Very popular with locals. Nice outdoor seating area. Order Trapanese pesto pasta, spaghetti vongole, and lemon sorbet for dessert
La Costa (Favignana)
Drink: Best Bars in Trapani
Jekyll Pub: Best negroni
San Vito Lo Capo
Stay: Andromeda Hotel or Artemide Hotel
Eat: Best Restaurants in San Vito Lo Capo
Drink: Best Bars in San Vito Lo Capo
Sea Garden: For aperol spritz only
Map of our Western Sicily Roadtrip
Detailed Western Palermo Roadtrip Itinerary
Day 1 - Palermo
Arrive at the Palermo Airport in the early afternoon and take the train 45 minutes to Palermo Centrale train station. From here, the main historical city center of Palermo is only a 10 minute walk and we recommend getting a hotel right in the historic center to maximize your time since you'll only have one night here.
Note: We actually spent 3 nights in Palermo and it was way too long in our opinion! From what we've seen, people either love or hate Palermo, and we unfortunately were part of the latter group. We do, however, think it's totally worth spending one night to quickly explore the city and try some great restaurants.
Palermo is a very walkable city and we personally think you can see the highlights in one day (we know, this is controversial). Spend the afternoon walking around the historic center of Palermo, stopping by the Praetorian Fountain, Piazza Vigliena, the Palermo Cathedral, and Norman Palace.
In the late afternoon, head over to Ballaro Market – Palermo is world renowned for its street food, and Ballaro Market is the heart of it all. This is a bit of a chaotic place with vendors packed along the streets shouting to attract you to try their food, so be prepared. We'll be honest, Ballaro Market was a cool place to see, but we really were not impressed with any of the street food we tried there.
Palermo is well-known for it's extravagant aperitivo platters (boards with several types of finger foods) and you'll find tons of bars lining the main tourist road of Via Maqueda offering aperitivo deals at shockingly low prices. While this may be tempting, we actually recommend skipping these places, and instead heading to Bottega Monteleone for a much more relaxing aperitivo experience.
For dinner, head over to either Corona Trattoria or Osteria Mercede for some incredibly delicious and authentic Sicilian cuisine. If you've still got some energy after dinner and want to check out a few bars, we recommend Goccio, Botteghe Colletti, and dal Barone in the Kalsa neighborhood.
Day 2 - Palermo & Gratteri
If you missed any or the stops from yesterday's itinerary, then we recommend spending the morning exploring the rest of Palermo and then grabbing and early lunch at La Galleria.
After lunch, take the train back to the airport, pickup your rental car, and drive 2 hours to the tiny mountaintop village of Gratteri, arriving in the late afternoon.
Note: If you don't want to spend the morning in Palermo, you can instead pickup your rental car early and stop at 'A Cuccagna in Termini Imerese for lunch. This lunch spot is super simple, but we actually had one of our favorite pastas of the entire trip here – the Carrettiera pasta. It's also a cute town to wander around for a few minutes.
Spend the rest of the afternoon enjoying Gratteri Resort and wandering around the village. Most of the rooms have private balconies with incredible views of the village that are perfect for a glass of wine at sunset. Dinner tonight (and tomorrow) will be at the resort – they have a really nice restaurant with a great selection of Sicilian dishes and wines.
Day 3 - Cefalù
After breakfast at the hotel, drive down to the coastal town of Cefalù. Parking is a bit tricky here – you can try this parking lot, but it's very narrow and fills up quickly. We actually ended up finding free street parking a bit further up the hill about a 10-15 minute walk into town.
Cefalù is a very cute, but also very touristy beach town. It's a nice place to spend a few hours exploring, but we were so happy we decided to stay in Gratteri instead of Cefalù! We found the quality of the restaurants to be very average in Cefalù – they definitely cater to tourists. We won't recommend the lunch spot we ate at, but we did see a place close by called Mas Que Nada that seemed popular.
After lunch, you can either spend the afternoon at the beach in Cefalù, or do as we did and head back up the Gratteri. There is a nice hiking trail just behind the hotel that leads up to a viewpoint and cave (about a 30 minutes walk uphill), or you can spend the afternoon at the pool, sauna, or just relaxing on your balcony.
Day 4 - Trapani
Check out of your hotel in Gratteri in the mid-morning and drive about 2.5 hours to the coastal town of Trapani. We recommend arriving in Trapani right before lunch and then spending the rest of the afternoon exploring the town. If the accommodation you choose does not have parking, we recommend parking in this paid parking lot (just outside the restricted ZTL area).
For lunch, head over to the patio at Ristorante Antichi Sapori and order spaghetti vongole, Trapanese pesto pasta, and finish off the meal with a lemon sorbet (this place was absolutely packed with locals who were all drinking this white slushy drink for dessert, which we found out was actually lemon sorbet!).
Trapani is a super walkable town so just spend the rest of the afternoon getting lost in the streets. For sunset, find a seat outside along the boardwalk at MOAI and grab an aperol spritz.
What about Erice? If you read other blogs, you'll probably hear about the mountaintop village of Erice that sits above Trapani. Many people recommend this as a "must-do" for sunset while in Trapani, but honestly, we don't agree. Erice felt like a total tourist trap, and actually a bit Disney-esque. The weather is also much colder up there and frequently trapped in a fog cloud (i.e. no sunset). If you're dying to see Erice, there's a funicular at the base of the mountain that takes only 10 minutes.
There's plenty of restaurant options for dinner to take your pick from our list! And if you're looking for a nice drink spot after dinner, we recommend Jekyll Pub – they have really good negronis!
Day 5 - Daytrip to Favignana
Our day trip the Favignana was the highlight of our entire Sicily vacation! Book your ferry tickets with Liberty Lines a few days before (roundtrip, so you don't get trapped on Favignana!!) and head to the ferry dock in the morning. We recommend booking the 9:30AM ferry and returning on the 5:00PM ferry.
Note: The Liberty Lines Ferry dock is NOT at the Trapani Port - the Trapani Port is only for cruise ships. Be sure to go to the correct location.
Once you arrive in Favignana, it's time to rent a bike for the day! Favignana is a pretty small island that is 100% best explored with the freedom of a bike. You'll see tons of bike rental shops offering a range of prices. We ended up paying only €5/bike for the full day, but up to €10 is reasonable.
We stopped at the following spots throughout the day in this order:
Cala Rossa: the most popular, and most beautiful spot! Get here early before the crowds. It's a great place to go swimming.
La Costa Sunset Bar: This is where we stopped for lunch. Nice outdoor restaurant with lots of seafood options and a great view.
Spiaggia di Lido Burrone: Good spot for an aperol spritz
Spiaggia di Marasolo: Skip it if you're running low on time
We recommend getting back to the main port area around 3:30PM and spending the last hour walking around town and grabbing a cannoli.
You'll arrive back in Trapani just in time for aperitivo, sunset, and dinner!
Day 6 - San Vito Lo Capo
After a light breakfast, drive just under an hour to the absolutely adorable beach town of San Vito Lo Capo. This was probably our favorite town of the entire trip because it gave all the chill beach town vibes! Think people walking around in bikinis and sandals, outdoor seafood spots, and aperol spritz's for days. Spend the entire day just relaxing, walking around town, eating, and chilling on the beach.
Day 7 - Zingaro Nature Reserve
Get ready for an epic hike today at Zingaro Nature Reserve. This was a close 2nd for our favorite day, just behind the day in Favignana (and probably the only reason it came in 2nd was because we got trapped for 2 hours in a crazy thunder storm mid-hike).
Before leaving for the hike, we highly recommend stopping to grab some sandwiches, snacks, and water for the day (there's nowhere to refill water along the hike so bring plenty!). The hike itself is a 14km coastal route (7km one-way), taking at least 4 hours roundtrip. Be sure to bring a swimsuit and towel because there's tons of swimming opportunities.
You'll start the hike from the North Entrance and pay €5 per person to enter the reserve (this also includes the parking). The trail is very well marked and we'd consider it an easy to moderate hike. Along the way, you'll hit several secluded beaches – we think it's worth checking out all the beaches along the route and then picking your favorites to spend more time at on the walk back.
Day 8 - Drive to the airport
That's it for your Western Sicily roadtrip! Drive just over 1 hour to the Palermo Airport, drop off your rental car, and head off on your next adventure!
Changes from our Original Trip
Our original Western Sicily roadtrip was 10 nights, and honestly, we felt it was way too long! We visited some places we didn't love, stayed too long in others, and overall felt the trip could have been a lot better. So for this itinerary, we adjusted a few things based on our experiences and things we would have done differently if we were to do it again. Here are the changes we made:
Decreased the time in Palermo from 3 nights to 1 night: We mentioned this earlier in the post, but we really didn't love Palermo. We have such high expectations going into it, but were left very disappointed. The city itself is pretty small so we were able to see most of it in just a single day. And the food just did not measure up to what we hoped, so we ended up eating at a lot of mediocre restaurants.
Replaced Castellemare del Golfo with San Vito Lo Capo: On our original trip, we stayed 2 nights in Castellemare del Golfo and only did a quick half day trip to San Vito Lo Capo. Castellemare del Golfo was fine, but we were so bummed we didn't get more time in San Vito Lo Capo! Both towns are perfect for accessing the Zingaro Nature Reserve, but the vibes of San Vito Lo Capo are just much better in our opinion.
Removed Day Trip to Marsala: We did a day trip from Trapani to Marsala mainly because we recognized the name "Marsala" from Marsala wine. We figured, the wine is famous, so the town must be cool...WRONG. Marsala is a super sleepy town that really doesn't make much of an impression, so for this itinerary, we removed it completely.
Removed Day Trip to Erice: This was also mentioned earlier in the post, we but were not fans of Erice. We dedicated half a day to this and wish we used that time elsewhere. The town of Erice is beautiful, but it's just so overrun with tourists and felt artificial.
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