It was such a great weekend! To be honest, getting there was pretty tough....went to bed at 11.30pm on the Friday night for a 3am Saturday morning wake up to get to our 6am flight. Had a bit of a rush to get through the gates and a minor passport incident with one of the gang but eventually we got ourselves onto our Ryanair flight. Basically we were all separated (first in first served for seats), crammed in like cattle and super tired in the most uncomfortable seats. It didn't help that we had three Sicilian/East London geezers sitting in front of us who got louder with every vodka they ordered! Anyway....not to start off on too much of a negative....when we arrived it was all worth it. We went from rainy cold UK (left) to sunny warm Sicily (right) - Bliss!
We picked up our rental car, dropped our stuff at our gorgeous old school opulent hotel, Grand Hotel Des Palmes and then raced to Cefalu - about an hour away from Palermo where we were staying. After such a terrible NZ summer and a very cold and wet 2.5 weeks in England it was SO nice to lie on the beach till after 5.30pm. Of course the boys (Sam and Jerry) couldn't sit still for long and first purchase was a ball for 'Two Touch'.
After soaking up the sun for a good couple of hours the boys decided to try and get to the top of the mountain (viewed in the image above) however the girls (Ange, Kristi and I) decided it was time for shopping and wine. We wandered up to the little village, browsed the shop and then found the cutest little cubby hole sized balcony at the back of a shop where we relaxed in the evening sun with some local sicilian wine. Seriously. Amazing. We just kept pinching ourselves - exactly 12 hours before we were tired, grumpy, cold and rained on - sitting on that balcony we felt like we'd been away a week!
A few more pics from Cefalu - beautiful old European architecture gets me every time finished up with dinner at a restaurant on the water watching the sun set.
The next day was more of the same - another beach - this one with sun loungers and then a 'cultural excursion' to Erice - a medieval mountain top town. This was the scene of many photo ops and a million 'view' shots. It was also where (luckily) Sam was still able to get data roaming so that he could get minute by minute updates of the Man City/Newcastle game that he was missing (Man City won thank goodness). It was quite windy up there but wind is fine when it's warm!
Every time I'm in Europe I fall in love all over again with the detail everywhere. I didn't take nearly enough pictures (surprise surprise!) but here are a couple of detail shots.
And I seem to have developed an owl obsession since my NZ owl purchase! Look at these (vintage I assume) super cute owls I found in the hotels display cabinet and then spotted a whole bunch of souvenir owls at the airport! I'm regretting not buying one now but at the time 8 euro was too much!
Anyway, that's the Sicily update. We didn't have a lot of time to focus on the creative aspects of Sicily as we were too busy sun worshipping but overall verdict was beautiful island, lots of rubbish, great beaches for those on limited time (apparently the really great beaches are on the other side of the island), ok food, great wine and crazy drivers.
I'm tired so I'll wrap this little update up now! Will aim to do Met Ball pics tomorrow.
x
