8th day - Cefalu

This morning I actually overslept :-) and only woke up shortly before 8:00 am. I wasn't happy about that because I wanted to be in Cefalu on time. And that was a little over 2 hours drive. So I quickly got up, had breakfast and off I went.

The drive 'past' Palermo is something special. Palermo is really exhausting to drive in, but the drive 'past' leads right through the city. The highway becomes a regular road in the middle of the city and it is chaotic with cars weaving in and out. There are also very short entrance and exit ramps, and I thought I had some training from driving on the A40 in Essen. Those who know the highway entrances on the A40 know what I mean... and here, there are several kilometers without any road markings...not that it would make a big difference, but a little orientation might help. I was definitely glad when I was past Palermo.

The weather today was warm, hazy, and cloudy, but it kept getting clearer as I got closer to Cefalu. From a distance, you could see Cefalu beautifully lying in front of a big mountain right by the sea. Once I arrived, it was so warm that I felt completely wrong in my typical Sicilian outfit (long pants, half shoes, socks, jacket). Parking on the long street lined with shops at the entrance of the town was not a problem, so I went on an exploration tour.

Through narrow streets, I could always see the cliff in the background, it looked amazing:

Once I reached the cathedral square, it became very Mediterranean again. Nice cafes and benches everywhere to sit.

The cathedral is, of course, wonderful again!

In the bar right next to the cathedral, I took a break after visiting the cathedral and tried a real treat: semifreddo ai pistaccio, which is an ice cream cake with the best pistachio ice cream and pieces of pistachios - simply delicious!

After that, I let myself drift through the old town and found some beautiful things :-)

When I reached the waterfront, there was a small funny passage in front of the city's protective wall. Through a passage, you could directly access a rugged rocky area where the surf was breaking. This was used as a photo background with lots of laughter, mostly with a splash of water involved :-))

On the other side of the passage, the protected pier was as if nothing had happened...

There were already quite a few tourists here and accordingly, there were many shops. A few steps lower, beautiful accordion music lured me and there it was, the historical bathing spot that I had read about.

Back in Balestrate (of course, passing Palermo again...) the village church had been nicely renovated, all the scaffolding was gone, and it looked like new:

Inside it was very nice too: