Sicilia!
9 DAYS
Rome 2 • Sorrento 2 • Taormina 1 • Palermo 2
Basic Inclusions
Accommodations
Accommodations in centrally-located three-star or four-star hotels. Rooming on a triple basis. Double rooms: $50 per night, per person.
Meals
All breakfasts. All dinners. Dinner with music on Day 3.
Transportation
Round-trip transportation on scheduled airline. Deluxe touring motorcoach. All public transportation tickets included where applicable.
Guide
Services of a specially-trained passports Tour Director throughout. All tips are included in the Program Cost. Whisper headsets included.
Travel Protection
Passports provides and pays for a Post Departure Travel Protection Plan that includes coverage for Trip Interruption, Trip Delay, Medical Expense and Evacuation and more.
Tour Summary
Itinerary Includes
Unlimited public transportation
Days 1-2: Home - Rome
Arrival transfer
Visit to the Pantheon
Stroll on Piazza Navona
Day 3: Rome
Rome City Sightseeing: 24-hour public transportation pass in Rome, Local Guide, Visits to the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, Visit to the Vatican Museums, Headset receiver for the Vatican sites, Visit to the Sistine Chapel, Visit to St. Peter's Basilica
Dinner with music
Day 4: Rome - Sorrento
Visit to the Naples National Archaeological Museum, Local Guide, Visit to the excavated Roman city of Pompeii
Day 5: Sorrento
Excursion to Capri: Round trip shuttle to the port, Ferry Sorrento-Capri, Round-trip Capri funicular, Visit to Capri's Gardens of Augustus, Ferry Capri-Sorrento
Day 6: Sorrento - Taormina
Ferry to Messina
Day 7: Taormina - Palermo
Visit to the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento
Day 8: Palermo
Half-day city sightseeing in Palermo and Monreale: Local Guide, Visit to Monreale Abbey Cloister and Cathedral with audioguide
Day 9: Departure
Departure transfer
UNPARALLELED STANDARD OF EXCELLENCE
CITY-CENTER HOTELS
Stay right in the heart of it. Why settle for staying outside of the city? Wake up in the city. Explore. Have dinner in the city. Explore. Return to the hotel at your convenience.
Check out our typical hotels
3-AND-4 STAR HOTELS
We’ve scoured each city for the finest hotels for our groups. Comfortable, conveniently located, clean and safe. That’s what we do.
HOTEL CHOICE
We give you options - but the choice is yours.
AMAZING FOOD
Student tour dinners don’t have to stink! Enjoy authentic, high-quality food, and lots of it. Three-course meals that you will want to post on social media.
Check out what our food is like
INDUSTRY BEST TOUR DIRECTORS
Passports contracts only the finest, A+ Tour Directors in the industry. With decades of experience, our team is second-to-none in terms of experience and professionalism. Read more about our amazing Tour Directors.
24-HOUR SERVICE
Your Tour Director will meet you at the airport and stay with you every step of the way until your return flight. They are your own personal travel expert.
INCLUDED FLIGHTS
We work with the airlines so you don’t have to.
BEST AVAILABLE ROUTINGS
We look for the best possible routings for your group with a minimal number of legs and ideal layovers. We try to get you in early - but not too early - to maximize your time overseas.
MORE INCLUSIONS
UNLIMITED PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION INCLUDED
You don’t want to have to worry about getting metro tickets when you’re pressed for time. We provide pre-loaded travel cards so that you can hit the ground running.
INCLUDED OVERSEAS MEDICAL COVERAGE
Passports provides and pays for a post-departure travel protection plan that helps protect you while on your trip with coverage for trip interruption, trip delay, baggage loss, theft or delay, emergency medical expenses, evacuation and more.
ALL TIPS INCLUDED OPTION
Tour Directors receive tips at the end of the tour. Including the tip in the up-front tour cost saves your group from carrying around extra money overseas or being surprised with an extra expense at the end of the tour. This is just another way that Passports is honest and up-front about all expenses. You can choose to include the tip ahead of time - or not to. Passports gives you the option.
NO ON TOUR UPSELL
Ever been pressured on tour to purchase an excursion? Or been shuttled into one workshop after another? Not with Passports.
VALUE VALUE VALUE
Dollar-for-dollar Passports is the best value you can get. Our tours are packed with included activities for a price that you can't beat with any other company.
HUMAN-FIRST POLICIES
FANATICAL CUSTOMER SUPPORT
We are here to be your partner. We support our group leaders 100%. Through thick and thin, we will work with you to make your travel program an annual success.
BEST REFUND POLICY IN THE INDUSTRY
Passports refunds 75% until 30 days prior to departure as our default policy. Early cancellations have fixed, low cancellation penalties. We would love for you to compare our cancellation policy to our competitors. Passports acts as the best partner we can, for every traveler, on every tour. That’s our promise.
SINGLE POINT OF CONTACT
Our Tour Advisors are amazing people who work with the group leaders during the pre-sale, enrollment, pre-departure, on-tour and post-tour periods. They check in when the group is overseas. They are the point of contact throughout the entire process to assist in all phases of the tour. This is more important than you would think unless you’ve been with another company and changed hands several times in the course of the tour. The point is: trust and accountability are critical in our relationship with a group leader.
NO HIDDEN CHARGES
No adult fee. With Passports, adults pay the same as students. Oftentimes adults will opt for a double room as they can’t room with students, and there is a charge for the double room. But there is no charge simply for being an adult.
No hidden airline fees. No hidden tripwire fees. With Passports, what you see is what you get.
Detailed Itinerary
Days 1-2: Arrival, Pantheon, Piazza Navona
Rome is your destination; a wide-bodied jet is your vehicle. Swoop down over the Alps and touch down on the wide concrete runway at Fiumicino Airport. You've arrived in Italy!
Proceed to your centrally-located hotel, settle in and get ready to explore your surroundings.
If your schedule allows, consider a visit to the Trevi Fountain, one of Rome's most celebrated sights, which was the terminus of the Aqua Virgo aqueduct. Throw a coin over your right shoulder and into the spray to ensure your return to this wonderful city!
Inside the "Temple to All the Gods," you will understand why it has been called one of the better-preserved and most harmonious monuments of antiquity.
Walk through the plaza built on the site of Domitian's Stadium. Lined with grand buildings and trendy cafes, this oblong square is adorned with statues and fountains, notably Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers.
Overnight: Rome
Day 3: Rome City Sightseeing, Dinner with Music
Set out on a sightseeing tour of Rome.
A full-day local guide, well-educated and specially-trained on the history and culture of Rome, will accompany your group.
Walk through the best known monuments of Ancient Rome, the Colosseo and the Foro Romano. Once the heart of a vast empire, the Forum was filled with extravagant buildings and crowded with people from all over the known world.
Discover outstanding masterpieces collected for the Vatican Museums since the early 1500s. See exceptional statues from antiquity, such as Laocoön and His Son and the Apollo Belvedere, as well as stunning Renaissance paintings, notably the The School of Athens fresco in the Raphael Rooms.
Marvel at Michelangelo's Last Judgment and brightly-colored ceiling frescoes in the Cappella Sistina.
Enter the sanctuary recognized as the world's largest church. The Basilica di San Pietro also houses priceless works of art, in particular Michelangelo's Pietà and Bernini's Dove of the Holy Spirit.
Tonight, enjoy dinner while local singers and musicians entertain you with O Sole Mio, Volare and other favorite Italian songs.
Overnight: Rome
Day 4: Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento
Board your coach and travel south on the autostrada to the Bay of Naples.
Visit the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, one of the world's great museums of Greek and Roman antiquities, housed in an impressive 16th-century palace. It holds ancient statuary, including the Sosandra Aphrodite and the Artemis of Ephesus, a fabulous collection of mosaics from Pompeii, artwork from the Villa Pison at Herculaneum, and more.
A full-day local guide, well-educated and specially-trained on the history and culture of Pompeii and Naples, will accompany your group.
Walk through the Roman city recognized by UNESCO as a treasure of Western Civilization. See how well-to-do Romans lived 2,000 years ago, until Mt. Vesuvius all at once destroyed this city in one day and preserved it for all time.
Continue to the fabled town of poets and sunsets, also renowned for its embroidery and intarsia (wood-inlay).
The evening is free to enjoy Sorrento's scenic delights and spectacular views. For the finest overlook of all, you may want to go to Punta di Sorrento and watch the sunset from the belvedere.
Overnight: Sorrento
Day 5: Excursion to Capri
Descend the winding road to the port of Sorrento.
A ferry will take you to the Isle of Capri.
Transfer by funicular to the town of Capri's main square (Piazzetta), passing tropical gardens on the way. On the island stands Villa Jovis, the imperial residence from which Tiberius once ruled his empire. Recall tales of the Emperor Augustus, and of the mischievous Caligula.
From Capri's Piazzetta, it's an easy walk to the Gardens of Augustus, a magnificent public garden landscaped in the 1930s by the German industrialist Friedrich Krupp. Its terraces adorned with colorful and fragrant vegetation are perched atop a cliff with a sheer drop to the sea. The gardens face Capri's southern coast and provide splendid views of the 14th-century Charterhouse of San Giacomo, the Bay of Marina Piccola, down below, and the Faraglioni, the needle-like rocks that soar above the sea.
Board a ferry bound for Sorrento.
Overnight: Sorrento
Day 6: Reggio, Ferry to Messina, Taormina
Today, enjoy a scenic ride through Calabria to the city of Reggio, the very toe of Italy.
Board a ferry for the short crossing of the Strait of Messina to Sicily, the great melting pot of the Mediterranean world. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, Normans, French and Spanish have all left their marks here and contributed to a rich heritage.
Travel to the medieval city of Taormina, perched high above the sea.
Settle into your hotel and luxuriate in one of Europe's most popular beach resort areas, situated in the shadow of 10,780-foot-high Mt. Etna, Europe's most active volcano. Its chimney is believed to reach thirty miles deep into the earth.
Overnight: Taormina
Day 7: Agrigento, Palermo
Travel through the hilly Sicilian hinterland, covered with pine and eucalyptus woods, then down through vineyards and olive groves towards the coast. Agrigento, Carthage's trade partner in antiquity, is the birthplace of both the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles and the modern Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello.
Explore the exceptional site known as the Valley of Temples, since nine of the ten temples built there in antiquity are still visible. They are the remnants of a city that the 5th-century BC Greek poet Pindar called "the most beautiful city built by mortal men." The Temple of Zeus, though never completed, was considered the Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World.
Continue to Sicily's capital city, which once rivaled Córdoba in Oriental splendor.
Overnight: Palermo
Day 8: Palermo City Sightseeing
Enjoy a sightseeing tour highlighting Palermo's landmarks. See the Piazza Bellini, a delightful square with Moorish features, the lively Via Roma and the Norman Palace.
A half-day local guide, well-educated and specially-trained on the history and culture of Palermo, will accompany you today.
You will stop at Monreale, the site of a 12th-century Benedictine abbey. There, visit the dazzling cathedral to view 6,000 square yards of multicolored mosaics (chiostro) representing the complete cycle of the Old and New Testaments.
The afternoon is unscheduled.
Check out the Vucciria, the maze of side streets around Piazza Domenico, crowded with produce vendors and a myriad of food stalls; the perfect place to have lunch!
Shop for souvenirs at the Via Papireto flea market, where you may see Sicily's famous painted carts.
Overnight: Palermo
Day 9: Departure
Most good things must come to an end. Your suitcase full of memorabilia and of photos ready to be processed, you'll arrive home later today, eager to share your discoveries with family and friends.
CUSTOM TOURS
All tours can be customized to your particular needs.
Or start from scratch - we will build your dream tour!
Visit to the Pantheon
Visits to the Colosseum and the Roman Forum
Visit to the excavated Roman city of Pompeii
Sorrento, Italy
Excursion to Capri
Taormina, Sicily
Palermo City Sightseeing
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