If you don't want to start off on the wrong foot with Sicily, this tip may well save your whole trip. I'm still grateful to several of my friends who warned me of Palermo. Especially if you're arriving late in the evening as we did you will want to save yourself the stress of driving into the city. Instead, head west. In half an hour you are in Castellammare del Golfo, a pleasant fishing town with its own long stretch of beach. We were staying at a pleasant B&B where we woke up to a view of the marina full of fishing boats. In Palermo it would probably be some noisy street instead. In the end we skipped Palermo altogether, just driving past it on the coastal road from west to east was overwhelming enough. And we're not fans of big cities anyway.

2. Rent an Italian car

By Italian I mean stylish and compact, but not necessarily comfortable. There's a good reason why the majority of the cars on the island are Fiat Pandas (or so it seems) – the streets in most of smaller towns are ridiculously narrow. We made the mistake of choosing a Volvo V40 which we were offered at a discounted price at the rental office. This is wrong on so many levels - first of all, no amount of comfort could ever compensate the stress we experienced maneuvering between all other moving vehicles while not only avoiding passengers but also all the parked cars blocking each side of the road. Secondly, Scandinavian and Italian driving styles are so different that I believe it's also philosophically wrong to rent a Swedish car in Sicily, it will get back to you one way or another.