How To Get Around Palermo

Published by: BouncePosted
Piazza San Domenico Palermo

Visiting Palermo is a real experience. This ancient city offers everything from exciting nightlife to city sightseeing and amazing food and drink. You can enjoy quality shopping here as well, or wander around the city center enjoying the atmosphere and the various historical sites that are clustered around this part of the city. Palermo is a special place, and it offers an atmosphere that you cannot enjoy in many other places in the world.

The Palermo Airport is easy to navigate, and you will be done with your arrival tasks in no time. Once you have your luggage from the airport, you will want to make sure that you drop off your bags at a Bounce luggage storage in Palermo. Having your hands free can make traveling around all the parts of the city easy and worry-free. You will find that much of this part of Sicily can be enjoyed on foot with ease, so having your hands free is definitely a plus.

If you are ready to learn some more bout how to get around Palermo, you need to read on.

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Boat in Palermo

How to Get Around Palermo by Train

Getting around Palermo by train can save you a lot of money. The train is most useful if you are planning to jump from city to city in the area. Sightseeing inside Palermo is best done on foot or through other means of transportation, but you can use the main railway station as a way to head out to see other places along the coast for the day.

The entire train route in this area can take you to nine different cities, and you can readily buy tickets for all of these sites if that is your goal. You might want to head out from Palermo for the day to see another nearby town and having train tickets makes this process very simple and straightforward. This is not an area where a taxi can take you from city to city, so you will need to plan on using the train for this sort of trip planning.

You can essentially travel all around Sicily on the train, and if you are not worried about staying the night at different cities during this trek, you can make Palermo just one of your stops on this list. The train is easy to use, and there are various kinds of comfort levels that you can pick from for your tickets.

The main train station is easy to access, and you will be able to use this as a jumping-off place to lots of other major cities in the area. If you have been wanting to avoid waiting in the taxi ranks, you will love being able to get on a train and see the world passing by out the window.

The Stazione Centrale will connect you to the most far-flung parts of the city like Stazione Tommaso Natale, or you can just use this hub to take you over to Palermo Brancaccio and the ocean. The central station for the train is easy to get to, but there are not many stops along the routes.

This is not a truly useful way to get around central Palermo, but it is important to note that this is a good way to get to the airport or to head out to see other places in the nearby cities and towns. The metro system also links up here at the Palermo Central Station, so you might be able to get connected with your other travel plans with ease from this site.

If you are used to traveling in places like London, where the tube can take you to almost any place in the city, you will need to look at the train in Palermo as more of a specific-use option. You will not find trams and subways here that connect to all parts of the city, but that is all right. If you are prepared in advance for the experience to be more about walking or taking public transportation over short distances, you will have no trouble being ready to get around this city.

How to get around Palermo

How to Get Around Palermo by Bus

Palermo city buses are notoriously late and are operated by AMAT. The AMAT kiosks will promise times that you will not find to be accurate. This is one of the least reliable ways to get around the city, but it can be affordable, and when you are lucky timing-wise, you can easily head from one city-center location to another. Buses here are comfortable and clean, but their timeliness is often in doubt.

Many people use the bus to visit central Palermo sites like the Norman Palace or the many beautiful churches. You should consider getting a multi-way bus pass to save some money if this is how you are planning to visit the city. You will need to remember that public transportation like this in Palermo is not well-known for being reliable, and have some patience if this is your intended plan.

Thankfully, the city center is easily accessed on food in most cases, so you will not have to struggle to get from place to place, even if your bus never shows up. Public transportation is not as heavily prized in this city with its slower pace of life as it might be in other parts of the world.

If you want to avoid the bus lines and try the tram, there are a few tram stations that are scattered throughout the city. These tram lines have fallen very short of the original stated intention of the project, and many locals make fun of them. This might be the least useful way to get around the city, but the tramline can connect you with a few key stops near the city center.

Cars parked in Palermo

How to Get Around Palermo by Car

This is probably the best way to get around in this city. If you rent a car, you will have access to the entire city without relying on the timelines of bus drivers or other metro or train locations. You will need to be wary of taxi drivers, as their driving can be quite aggressive at times.

Having your own car is much easier and more pleasant than hiring a taxi for this need. Many people report that the wait times for taxis are quite long and that the driving of some of the people who have their own taxis is a bit off-putting. This can also be an expensive way to get around the city by car when compared to just renting your own vehicle. You will find that there are many parts of the city that are no more or less accessible by taxi, unlike some U.S. locations that are best enjoyed with the help of a taxi or rideshare.

Getting your own rental car can make it much easier to access every place in the city centre as well as the old town and other locations that are not right inside the city. This will likely be your best bet for saving some money too since you will almost always have to use various means of transportation to get around the city otherwise.

Car rentals are not actually very expensive here, and you will likely be given a very small car that will help you to navigate the city centre and other tight spaces without trouble. There are many nice benefits to having a car that is just yours since there are many other locations that you might want to visit within the Palermo city area.

There are many other small towns that are worth the visit within about three hours of Palermo in all directions. You might not want to fight passenger traffic in the city, and you can head out to many other lovely locations nearby if you want a break from Palermo for the day.

While it might not seem like it, this is the cheapest way to get around this part of Italy, and you will be able to access various other trip options due to the freedom of having a car on hand. Most of the town is accessible by car as well, which is not always the case for major cities in this part of the world.

Walking around Palermo Cathedral

How to Get Around Palermo on Foot

Like most cities that were built in ancient times, Palermo is perfectly suited for walking. You can usually get everywhere in town on foot with ease if you wish. Walking can allow you to really see the sights of the city and can help you to avoid the chaos of the national railway or the metro Palermo. Taxi rides can be hair-raising as well, and walking will allow you to avoid this kind of experience.

The oldest parts of the city are walkable here, and you can enjoy the city sightseeing you might be planning with ease on foot. The city centre is quite easy to access on foot, and you will not have to worry about missing out on anything like you might if you were speeding around in a vehicle of some kind.

If your feet get tired, consider sitting down for a snack and a drink at a sidewalk cafe, or plan to dine during the hot part of the day somewhere cool and shady. This is part of the beauty of experiencing this city on foot, and you will not be able to enjoy flexible plans like this if you are endlessly waiting in taxi ranks or struggling to find a bus to take you to where you want to go.

Palermo walking tours are published all the time online, so you might want to consider planning out your walking route based on other travelers' tips and tricks. It is easy to take in the Palermo Cathedral, the Porta Nuova, the Teatro Massimo, and various markets on foot in one easy trip. This is a much better way to really take in the city as you head from place to place.

Many people who come to this city will just plan on wearing walking shoes that can take a little bit of a beating and just hoof it around the various sights that they want to see. This can be the best way to see this lovely part of Italy and to experience it in the way it was truly meant to be enjoyed.

Marina in Palermo

Navigating Palermo is Quite Easy

Palermo is a simple city to get around in, and you might want to plan on using various modes of transport during your visit. You could elect to use a combination of train travel, bus travel, and tram travel to get you from place to place, or you could choose to use your feet to do most of the work during your stay.

If you choose to stay in the center of the city, you will have access to many locations on foot without trouble, but you could also choose to stay all over Sicily and ride the train to Palermo and other locations nearby. There is no wrong way to travel around this beautiful city, and you will have to use the different methods of transportation that suit you the most. If you have grown tired of having to worry about getting a rideshare or a taxi, there is no need to have to handle your travel days in this way in Palermo.

Being free to walk or to take the train to another city near Palermo is a really nice benefit of navigating in this area. There are many ways to enjoy your time along the Sicilian coast, and navigation of this area is so simple that you will probably have many options open to you at all times.

Always make sure that your luggage is stored safely with Bounce before you head out on your day's adventures, and you will have a lot of fun seeing this historical city.

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