Floating Plastic Animal Man

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We decide it’s time for a morning on the beach. As we look down from our balcony we spy a shady patch of sand directly below us that doesn’t look to be too heavily occupied. The water’s patchy warm, but Issy seems to be struggling to find the patches. She tells me she doesn’t like that fish keep nibbling away at her feet. Don’t people pay a lot of money to subject themselves to just that in places like Bali, although I suppose it could be a bit different when you’re not expecting it.

Giovanni has kindly provided us with a small orange rubber ball and two pink bats with pictures of Minnie Mouse on them. We hope these will contribute to the morning’s entertainment. The idea was for us to entertain each other, but the reality’s a bit different - it feels like there’s no shortage of amused onlookers giggling at our ineptitude. We start our serious match in the shallows. I tell Issy I’m planning to enter Wimbledon next year, but I‘ve got a nasty feeling that the qualification requirements there might be a tad more stringent that just successfully hitting the ball backwards and forwards six times without it touching the water. I’m sure we managed that epic feat at least once.

We settle in on our towels on the sand. Perhaps unsurprisingly there aren’t any shops down here, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people trying to sell us things. There’s "coco man", who walks up and down with silver trays piled high with slices of coconut yelling “coco, delicioso coco”. Then there’s an old favourite, "African sunglasses man", who‘s carting around enough sets of shades to darken the vision of half a small country. And then there’s "African floating plastic animal man". He’s carrying so many of these things that when we first saw them it looked like they were gliding magically past above the sand on a cushion of air, but no, I’m sure he’s in under there somewhere - bright green crocodiles, white unicorns with gold horns, pink flamingos, you name it he’s got it.

We head back for a siesta. When we first got here Giovanni showed us a small booklet written by his mother documenting some of the history of the house that the apartment is part of. Their ancestors bought the land that Casa Martino now stands on from Sicily’s Spanish government way back in 1680. The land was part of the walls that had been built to protect the town from Barbary pirates - Muslims and privateers who operated out of ports on North Africa’s so-called Barbary Coast. The land only became available when the Spaniards decreed that the pirate danger was past, and the walls were no longer required. The booklet’s full of interesting anecdotes, and I think this one’s worth reproducing in full:

“This abundance of chapels and private churches is because there have been clerics for generations in the Martino family. This is due to an interesting circumstance that might be worth relating. In the old days only the church had a monopoly over the preserving and selling of snow, a very important commodity in Sicily. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a particularly enlightened city administration, then composed of members of the most important families in Cefalu, among whom there was a Martino, ruled that the city council should also establish a snow reserve to be enjoyed freely by the citizens. This was a challenge to the bishop’s authority and he reacted by excommunicating the decision makers. My father told me, according to the story handed down for generations in the family, that there was a public ceremony with candles held upside down, as well as other strange rituals required for the case. The city council held on for a while, but excommunication was a heavy penance in those days so eventually they gave in and one of the conditions posed for the lifting of the ban was that my family should provide the living for two canons. My family in its turn imposed the condition that by right one of the canons should belong to the family. It was a cunning way to preserve power and authority, which accounts for the private chapel and two churches, one in town and one near our country house. Therefore, for generations a member of the Martino family became a priest and he had the right to become a canon even before he was ordained, going to processions, even as a near-child, wearing all the trammels, ermine cape etc. of his office!

I know of at least one of them being a very charitable, saintly man, so that when he died, people thronged in to pay their respects to his mortal remains. Indeed, there were so many that the floor in what is now my cousin’s dining room collapsed under the weight! Since nobody was hurt this was considered a miracle confirming the deceased canon’s virtue.”

We venture out to watch the sunset. It is again spectacular, perhaps even more so as it’s a bit hazy tonight. The colours in the afterglow are almost surreal.

We dine again on a platform above the rocks next to the water. Our waiter asks if we want “una botella de agua”, or that’s what it sounded like. I’m pretty sure this is Spanish for ”a bottle of water”. This is encouraging, he thinks we’re Spanish. Well maybe he did until I tell him that the food is “bellísima”. “No” he tells me very sternly pointing his finger at me. Issy is “bellísima”, but food can only be “deliciosa”, well assuming it is, and my pizza was indeed superb. Pity my language skills are apparently a bit less so.

I comment to Issy over dinner that I think Cefalu may have narrowly overtaken Assos as my new favourite location on the planet. It is so beautiful here. Spectacular sandy beach sitting against a backdrop of ancient traditional houses, a stunning cliff towering over the whole town, a maze of narrow streets, thousand year old cathedral, the list goes on.

It’s party central again in the main square in front of the Cathedral. Tonight it’s a rock band entertaining a large crowd of keen onlookers.

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Comments

[Home and Away]

Beaches...
I prefer white sand beaches fringed with palm trees. As far as European beaches are concerned I like Antibes on the French Riviera. We spent many holidays there. What reason took you to Cefalu?

[DaveandIssy]

Beaches
We’d actually never heard of Cefalu until we saw a post on Travelblog. Yes, white palmed fringed beaches are great, and we’ve been lucky to go there a few times, but Cefalu was wonderful too, and a really nice sandy beach.