Southern Italy & Sicily
Day 13 - Taormina to Palermo via Celafu
Thursday, 15 April 2004
Today we had to end up in Palermo for a night ferry to Naples. So we took one more walk through Taormina, a trip to the sandy beach, then drove off. On the way we stopped in Celafu. I have to say, it is nearly as lovely as Taormina. The beach is really something, long, wide and sandy. Nearly perfect. The town is on a hill and ambling. There is a sea-front with lovely shops and restaurants backing into it.
We spent several hours just on the beach making giant sand octopi. However, the rains came and the wind whipped up, so we headed to one of the best meals we had on the whole trip. The kids were great, the food was wonderful.
After lunch we slowly got back in the car are drove off to Palermo. What a mess that city is. We had crazy traffic and massive road junctions with no signals and police chatting up girls instead of helping. The city has lost millions in construction contracts where they money has literally ‘disappeared’. The roads along the sea-front were half ripped up, with no apparent work continuing. Lovely old buildings were just boarded up. Very sad.
At the port, we had to ‘donate’ some money to some local saint to a gentlemen just so his teenage sons didn’t mess with the car. However, we soon were loaded on the boat and got to our lovely cabin. There we had a great lunch of sandwiches, fruit and cannoli we had prepared earlier. Then sleep.