The Seaside Town of Cefalu

Last week we flew to Sicily for eight nights of good food and relaxation. We have visited Italy a lot over the last two years, we've been to Rome, Venice, Tuscany, Florence, the Cinque Terre and the Amalfi Coast so the next obvious choice was to visit what some people believe to be the heart of Italy.

We had an early morning flight, and arrived in Palermo just after 10.00 a.m. We hopped on a train to take us to the Central City, and then planned to get the bus to Cefalu, a little seaside town about an hour East of Palermo. Upon arrival, we discovered there was no bus running that day. This was to be a recurring theme throughout our holiday, planned buses and trains mysteriously disappearing from timetables when we turned up!

The next train to Cefalu was in an hours time, so we sat down in the sun and people watched while we waited.

We arrived in Cefalu after lunch and headed to our B&B. We were staying a little bit out of town as usual, and were rewarded with an amazing view from our room when we arrived after walking up a steep hill in the hot sun.

In the height of the European summer, Cefalu's population of around 14,000 almost triples with tourists, but luckily we were visiting just outside of the high season, so we weren't overwhelmed with people.

The town is only small, and easy to walk around, with lots of small winding streets leading from the beach and waterfront up to the main street full of cafes, delis and gelato stores.

One of the main attractions in Cefalu is the Cathedral, built in 1311, it is a beautiful building about five stories high and dwarfed by the huge cliffs that surround it.

The Cathedral is located in a lovely Piazza, full of cafes and at night musicians play for the diners while the Cathedral is lit up behind them.

After exploring the town, we headed to the waterfront to watch the waves crashing against the huge rocks. We found the water around Cefalu to be quite rough, with big waves and strong winds, so I didn't do any swimming while we were there. I've seen enough Piha Rescue to know not to swim in rough waters!

We sat for a while on the boardwalk and admired the view back towards Cefalu, unfortunately it was too windy to stay too long, so we continued our walk along the seafront.

The beach stretched on for miles, with the sand dotted with lots of beach umbrellas from all the different beach clubs. We walked almost the full length of the promenade, scoping out which of the beach clubs looked good enough to spend a whole day at and which offered the best value for money.

We've gotten used to renting a couple of loungers for a day and being able to order food and drink to eat beachside, we first tried it in Croatia and it's a lot better than sitting on the sand and getting it all in your food! The addition of an umbrella is good because after a few hours in the sun, you need the umbrella to get some shade.

Looking back towards Cefalu

After deciding where we would spend the next day, we headed back into town for a late lunch. We stopped at a small pizza place that looking inviting, and got a couple of slices to takeaway, deciding to eat them in a small stairwell leading down to the beach.

We found it funny how much the names changed on the Coke bottles in Italy, since we obviously couldn't find Nicola or Bradley, we chose the next best thing.

We then headed back to the B&B to shower and change before heading out to later that evening for a dinner of, what else, pizza!

The next morning we had a standard delicious Italian breakfast of pastries and coffee, with a friendly visitor.

After breakfast we changed into our swimming togs and headed for the beach. We were lucky to have amazing weather the entire stay in Sicily, everyday was in the late 20's or early 30's. After such a long Winter we were long overdue some sunshine!

Dressing to match the beach umbrellas!

We walked down the beach a while, away from the town and the busiest beach bars, to a small patch that was mostly full of locals and their families, everyone seemed to know each other, and we were definitely the palest people in sight!

Having mentioned already that we didn't swim in Cefalu, we noticed most of the locals didn't either. I don't know if the sea is always that rough, but the lifeguards were REALLY vigilant with not letting anyone in the water past their knees, with their whistles blowing constantly telling people to come back to shore.

We had panini's for lunch, delicious and fresh with tomato and mozzarella, and then had iced Granita's to cool down afterwards. Granita's are essentially crushed ice and various flavours. We discovered Lemon Granita's on the Amalfi Coast and they were so delicious we were keen to have more.

After spending a good eight hours relaxing on the beach we headed back to the B&B to get ready for dinner. We realised while in Sicily that we have never really had a relaxing holiday, we're always so busy rushing around trying to do and see as much as possible, so we really tried hard this time to do as much relaxing as possible. We felt guilty at first, but that didn't last too long!

We had dinner at a restaurant recommended by our B&B owner, a small restaurant in the Piazza in front of the Cathedral. We had a beautiful view of the sun setting over the Cathedral and the food was good too.

We had a Sicilian antipasto platter, with bruschetta, parmesan, eggplant and mozzarella, all so fresh and yummy. We followed all this with two huge plates of pasta. Unsurprisingly we didn't do too much after dinner expect roll home into bed.

We had an early start the next day, off to the volcanic Aeolian Islands.