Sicily: Staying in Cefalù

After our intense sightseeing in Florence and Rome, Sicily was the final port of call in our Italian adventure last month. Flying into Palermo from Fiumicino, we joined the world's slowest queue to pick up our rental car.

Sadly it wasn't a classic Fiat 500 waiting for us or, indeed, a new Fiat 500, but our Fiat Panda kept us safe on the Italian roads, even if the Italians freaked us out with their driving antics. Who knew on a dual carriageway with a hard shoulder that you could get five unofficial lanes of traffic, or that if you missed your exit on the dual carriageway, it's acceptable to reverse down the hard shoulder! I nearly started crying in terror when I saw the latter happen. 

Our destination was Cefalù, a town about an 80 minute drive from Palermo, on the North coast of Sicily. We booked into the Hotel Kalura for seven nights, where we had a marvellous view from our room:

If you stay at the Hotel Kalura, make sure you book a room with a sea view as it's a stunning view. We stayed there B&B, but did eat lunch and dinner there once or twice, which was nice enough.

The hotel has a large swimming pool, perfect for cooling down in the afternoon, as well as its own private beach area (no sand though), which was great for swimming in the sea. The water is clear and lovely - perfect for snorkelling, which I bravely tried - though we were interrupted on our last day as a film crew were setting up - we never did get to find out what they were filming!

The hotel is about a twenty minute walk from Cefalù itself. We hopped in the car in the day to have long lunches in town, but walked there in the evening to make sure we could enjoy those €7 litres of house wine. Parking on the street is free between 1pm and 4pm, though no more than €0.80 an hour at other times (it's much cheaper to do this than park in a car park). x

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