We spent the night at a very strange hotel in Hallbergmoos near the Munich airport. Our flight was ~7am and some of our friends had told horror stories of security queues so we figured remove the risk. We successfully boarded our Lufthansa flight to Palermo to begin the Italian leg of our tour!
The flight was simple, though in landing in Palermo was something of a bouncy introduction and after some minor challenges finding first gear in our rented Renault we were on the road to Cefalu.
A note on Italian, and specifically Sicilian and specifically Palermo driving - DONT. We have never been so close to death so regularly, lanes are barely guidelines, speed limits don’t exist, and based on currently available information, Italian cars do not have indicators. The insane pricing of rental cars meant that we had a manual so Steph was in the hot-seat and handled it as well as could be expected for someone driving on the wrong side of the road and learning to use a backwards clutch.
The drive was around 2 hours and we, with some minor panic attacks, made it into the parking garage around 1 in the afternoon, grabbed a backpack with a change of clothes and strolled our way into the old town to find our bed and breakfast.
I cannot possibly say enough about how lovely Cefalu is, from the UNESCO listed Churches, the massive cliffs, gorgeous beach and winding cobbled streets, it’s a real story book place. My memories of it were fuzzy but all positive and every corner we turned just embedded again how awesome a place Italy is as a tourist.
Anyway we dumped our bags and were out the door to explore with a little list of jobs to get done; Get an Italian SimCard, make a booking for dinner (more on that later) and find a pharmacy to buy sunscreen.
We grabbed some lunch down on the foreshore in a bit of a tourist trap that provided excellent people watching and our first Spritz’s of the trip.
Getting the simcard was a minor debacle, but in a quaint tourist kind of way, as Italians shouted at each other and Steph and I hid in the corner while they chatted in Italian occasionally glanced at us and laughed. We did however end up with the card so jokes on them.
After successfully navigating those challenges we deserved a swim, so down to the beach and into the most lovely warm, calm water you can imagine for an hour or so of pure relaxation and joy.
Somewhere around 25 years ago I had had dinner in Cefalu with my family and Ken and Nada, close friends on my parents who had been travelling Sicily with us. The photo below is from that night and it has gone down in family lore as one of the seminal moments of my youth. Add to that fact that 6 or 7 years after that dinner we found a photo of the exact table at the exact restaurant in a magazine while waiting at an orthodontist appointment and it has always been something of a white whale of a place.
Luckily we were able to book the same spot at the same table (albeit with slightly updated ((only slightly)) furniture) and we settled in for what was one of the truly joyful dinners of our life. The food was spectacular, the sun was just setting on a perfect day, cats were wandering around our feet and we genuinely could not have been happier.
The next morning we woke early and strolled the streets taking photos of the gorgeous morning light. We then headed back to our B&B for a delicious continental breakfast on the terrace before collecting our car from the garage and setting off to meet our friends in Fiumefreddo di Sicilia.
