Buongiorno, Sicily!

The view from our Air B&B. Our hostess, Luisa,
was born in New York, but her parents moved
back to Sicily when she was 14. She still has a
strong New York accent -- adorable!

We spent the day yesterday — our first day in Sicily — wandering starstruck around the town of Cefalù (pronounced cheff-a-LOO). We had no idea it would be this wonderful: history, friendly residents (speaking Italian, yet!), jaw-dropping sights, charming narrow alleys with laundry hanging from balconies, great food, blue ocean, gelato. 

No one seems to know exactly when or why the town of Cefalù came to be, but its first mention in history was in 396 B.C. The entire island of Sicily has such a mind-bogglingly rich history -- having at one time or another been under the rule of Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, a few bishops, the Kingdom of Italy, the Mafia, modern Italy, and at times, no one at all -- that I can't even begin to sort through it. Happily for us, each culture left a bit of itself behind, in cathedrals and mosques and mummies and mosaics and menus, and now all we have to do is bask in it all. With gelato!

Our little Nikon Coolpix isn't up to the task of capturing the beauty, so none of these photos do it justice, but here's a little bit of Cefalù. 

Chiese del Purgatorio (Church of Purgatory). Baroque, decorated with figures in purgatory

Pastries and marzipan!

The Cathedral of Cefalù (Norman)

The town of Cefalù, from the beach. In person, it looks a lot cheerier!

A Cefalùean shopper

Cefalùean tourists, waiting for our first Sicilian meal: an arancina filled with prosciutto and mozzarella, and a slice of funghi pizza. Molto buona!

Looking west, toward Cefalù

Gary timed the waves, and said we could make it over these rocks and across this bridge with time to spare. I turned around and went back the way we came. A few minutes later, he did, too.

In summertime, these streets are probably a little more crowded. There's a handful of tourists in town already (although the busy season starts next month), but during siesta, from 1:00 to 4:00, only a few shops are open and the streets feel relatively empty.

The Lavatoio, a medieval laundry room. Water collects in these pools and runs out to the sea. 

It being Fat Tuesday yesterday, we had a serendipitous moment when we caught the tail end of the local schools' Carnivale. The schools apparently let out early, and the kids dressed up and paraded down the street, throwing confetti. All afternoon, we saw parents walking hand-in-hand around town with miniature princesses and princes and devils and clowns -- and not one single character from Frozen.














The traffic in Cefalù is hair-raising, and we are glad we opted to not rent a car. The streets in town are just barely wide enough for a car to pass, so we often had to stand aside to let cars by. We witnessed one scene where a delivery truck driver stopped his truck in the middle of the road, ran like mad to deliver a package, sprinted back to his truck to relieve the traffic piling up behind it, and discovered that he'd misplaced his keys. A local carabinieri (policeman) sent the driver off to retrace his steps while he calmly directed traffic, puffing on a cigar. As usual, I was itching to snap a photo, but I didn't think anyone was in a photo-op mood! (But we saw him today again, and I snapped this photo on the sly:)