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| Cefalu's Norman cathedral |
Yesterday we drove from Taormina to Cefalu and on to our hotel for our last 2 nights in Sicily, Relais Sant' Anastasia, in the mountains above Cefalu. So, now we have completed our circle around the entire island of Sicily, ending up tomorrow morning at the Palermo airport to start our journey home.
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| mosaic above altar |
Sicily is very mountainous, with long spines of limestone and lava and other volcanic rocks spreading all the way from the mountain ranges to the Mediterranean. Consequently, Sicily's autostradas have endless tunnels. If you really want to see the Sea and the coastal villages, take the provincial roads and plan to drive on windy roads for a long time. Worth it if you don't mind the traffic and trucks and hairpin turns because you will see so much more of this beautiful island. Taking the autostrada, which we did in order to reach our hotel by dinnertime, means you will see little but the insides of tunnels, some over a mile long, with only brief glimpses of the turquoise Mediterranean. We have driven hundreds of miles of back roads during our 2 weeks and loved them.
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| abandoned farmhouse in mountains above Cefalu |
Cefalu is a very busy small city with a large historical center and a splendid Norman cathedral. At least one of the back towers was built during Moorish times as demonstrated by its graceful and beautifully decorated Moorish arches. Inside the cathedral, instead of a garish Baroque altar, there is a lovely mosaic. I would not put Cefalu on my list of places to visit unless I had lots of time to wander the byways of Sicily and explore its old cities.
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| Sant' Anastasia |
Sant' Anastasia is a winery as well as a hotel, so we took the wine tour and tasted some of its wines. They practice organic and "bio-dynamic" viniculture and wine production. We did not think these methods produced exceptional wines. The best wines we tasted by far were Planeta, from our first wine-tasting at the Planeta Ulmo winery (one of 6 Planeta family wineries).
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| Sant' Anastasia vineyards |
The location is spectacular, with views over vineyards and olive groves, down a long mountain valley to the Mediterranean. We hiked this morning around Sant' Anastasia's extensive vineyards, about 4 miles, with a lot of climbing from the low point back to the hotel. It was beautiful. We watched some of their workers, all local farm laborers, pruning the vines.
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| restaurant in alleyway |
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| Queen Anne's lace Sicily version? |
Our afternoon visit was to Castelbuono, another old mountain town with a large castle. The town winds through narrow alleyways, one of which provided our lunch stop, up a steep hill to the castle.
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| Castelbuono castle |
This will be my last blog on Sicily unless I find time to do a blog highlighting our favorite places and activities. I will post an itinerary that we'll follow when we offer this trip to a group next year. My next blogging will probably start when we visit Portugal and Spain with a group in early June.
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