Palermo, Cortigliolo and the best pizza!

So there we were after a 20 hour ferry ride - in Palermo!

The ferry had to park backwards and by the time our parking deck was announced, it was already 6 p.m. - just under an hour after docking! So we hurried from deck 6 down to deck 2, where our car was parked. Again, it went pretty quickly. Our car was basically in the middle of the parking deck and when we got there with all our belongings, the first cars were already maneuvering around our car.

As I wrote in the previous post - in my opinion everything is a bit disorganized. Why don't they let people get into their cars as quickly as possible and then drive them out again in the exact reverse order? Hmm... I don't know.

Get off the ship, turn on the satnav and then just get out of the city! It was foggy and already dusk and the locals drive about as badly as the Thais in Bangkok! xD

Since the friends we wanted to visit in Sicily live near Custonaci, I had marked campsites nearby. So we drove to the campsite that was closest to them - "Lido Valderice" in Cortigliolo.

So we arrived there in the dark at around 7:30 p.m. The gate was open, but the reception was not manned. Absolutely normal in the pre-season, as I discovered. But I was not entirely comfortable with the campsite. The door to the women's washroom would not open. There were other Germans on this very small campsite who offered to translate for us because of their knowledge of Italian and French. They themselves had only arrived that evening and asked a French camper where and how they could check in at this "late hour".

He guided us up the campsite to where the operators lived in a house. A woman in a bathrobe came out and explained everything to us. Apparently you could open the door to the washroom, you just had to pull hard and you could choose a spot. You just had to pay at reception the next day.

But I found the campsite so awful that I told Peter (our travel buddy) that I did NOT want to pitch my tent there. Free-roaming dogs and especially cats are totally normal in southern Italy. (I have nothing against free-roaming cats either, we have 2 tomcats at home ourselves! What I don't like is when there are so many that they run around everywhere at night.)

However, the showers - and we all really needed one! - were also really dirty. They were more open there (seems to be common there) and there were leaves and needles from the surrounding trees everywhere. Spider webs everywhere and nothing had been cleaned at all. I wonder if the operators even want tourists if they don't clean anything up in the pre-season!?

So we looked for a nearby parking space using the Park4 Night app because I didn't want to drive another hour towards the other marked campsite. We were also tired and exhausted from the ferry trip, were just hungry and wanted to sleep. The parking space was acceptable, and there was practically no one else around except for cats running around freely.

We looked for a pizzeria for dinner and found a pizzeria (to go - not a restaurant) in the next town, "Tonnara Bonagia", that was at least open. A lot of restaurants/bars don't seem to know that tourists are out and about around Easter - or they don't care ;) Overall, there was practically nothing going on on the streets. Hardly any cars and practically no one else on the road.

In the pizzeria "Pizza Planet" we not only had the best pizza we've ever tasted, but also enjoyed a show ^^ The 4 men there were a well-rehearsed team! One rolled out the dough, the next topped several pizzas on a board about 2 meters long and pushed them from the board into the wood-fired oven. The third swung his large chopping knife so quickly after taking the pizza out that you were afraid he was going to cut off someone's fingers or cut up the worktop, and the fourth took orders over the phone and did the billing.

We got the most delicious pizza: a slightly thicker but very fluffy base, nice and crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. A good topping of real mozzarella on top and the edges smeared with garlic oil. We also took a 0.66 Peroni for €3 and had a quick chat with the pizza makers. They were shocked that a 0.33 Peroni cost €5 on the ferry ;)

We ate the pizza in the car back at the parking lot because there was no place to sit in the pizzeria. But that wasn't a problem... the delicious pizza made us forget all the inconveniences! Soooo delicious!

Afterwards we slept like babies in the car.

I woke up again at around 6 a.m. and took a walk along the adjacent "beach" or promenade. There was no one on the street, even the cats were still sleeping. The sound of the sea and the waves breaking on the rocks. It was quite windy and rain was coming, which I could already see in the distance.

I took the pop-up tent out of the car and opened it. It was still wet from the night in Lörrach and I wanted to dry it so that it didn't get moldy. Shortly afterwards, Peter was awake and made his green tea in his "mini camper" car. I woke my son, packed up the tent, which had dried by now, and we made our way to the other campsite just in time before it started to rain Sahara dust...