“I’m Pretending to be Pharoah” Man

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We’re woken at what feels like the crack of dawn by yet more fireworks, the noise from which would wake the dead. Midday we could understand, but a quick check of our watches confirms that it’s only 9am. We drift back into dreamland only to be reawoken a few minutes later by a noisy parade passing slowly, oh so slowly, down the narrow street in front of our apartment. We’re not quite sure exactly which patron Saint all this is supposed to be celebrating, but we assume whoever it was must have been an early riser.

We’re awake now so we set off to climb the 300 or so metre high sheer cliff that towers over the town, up to Cefalu Castle. We pay the entry fee and are given tickets with bar codes on them that we need to scan to get through a turnstile a few metres further along the steep path. Signs warn us to hang onto the tickets because we’ll need to scan them again before we’re allowed to leave. Huh? The logic for this requirement is escaping us just a tad; haven't they ever heard of one way turnstiles, but whatever, we’re glad we read the sign. We were warned that there’s nowhere to buy anything up the cliff, and the ground looks a bit rocky and uncomfortable, so I’m not sure spending the night locked in up here would be a particularly comfortable experience. …and what if you still can’t find your ticket in the morning; do they then make you stay up here forever. This seems like a stiff penalty for losing a small piece of paper.

The views are beyond stunning. We stop to admire the remains of the megalithic Temple of Diana which is believed to date from the ninth century BC. The walls are made of massive and perfectly interlocked blocks of rock. I remember reading about similar structures in South America that led at least one researcher to believe that they could only have been built by aliens. The locals here just look like Italians to us.

Next stop are some turreted walls at the top of the sheer two hundred metre high cliff that towers above the Cefalu Cathedral. Now I’m sure whichever ancient warriors put this thing here felt better about themselves afterwards, but did they really think putting a couple of metres of stone wall at the top of an already completely unassailable cliff was going to materially add to its impenetrability. As is often the case I think I might be missing something here.

There’s not all that much left of Cefalu Castle at the top of the hill. It’s apparently believed to have been built by the Normans in the eleventh century. The real attraction up here is the spectacular views down over the coast in both directions.

We decide on an afternoon on the beach. It seems we’d need to take out a second mortgage to secure front row sun lounges, which come in at an eye watering fifty euro for the rest of the day, be that eight hours or five minutes. We settle for the third row, which would still require a mortgage, but at least a slightly smaller one; we can get a set of these for the bargain price of only forty euro.

It’s a hive of activity down here. There’s all our African friends from yesterday, including "sunglasses man" and "floating plastic animal man". "Coco man" has also made a reappearance. He’s a bit hard not to notice. He doesn’t appear to own a megaphone, but we could hear his dulcet tones ringing out “coco, delicioso coco” quite clearly from a kilometre away and three hundred metres up the cliff when we were there this morning. And there are some new additions to the crew. “Small one size fits all blow up plastic penguin man“ has clearly chosen to specialise. And then there’s my personal favourite, “mobile entire fully fitted-out dress shop man”. I‘ve got no idea how he’s managing to support so many dresses of every conceivable size, shape and colour on coat hangers all suspended off the same long pole, but he seems to have the whole thing down to a fine art. We’re just getting over a fit of the giggles when we notice “I’m pretending to be pharaoh” man glide by fifty metres or so off shore. He’s stretched out on an armchair on a large rubber raft being paddled through the water by four bikini clad maidens. We’re now starting to think that maybe forty euros wasn’t too bad considering all the entertainment that’s on offer. It’s all very pleasant and relaxing stretched out under our umbrella interspersed by the odd dip in the crystal clear sandy bottomed shallows.

We decide that tonight we’ll eat in. In this case eating in consists of munching on some rolls whilst sipping some of the local brew on our balcony high above the sand, looking out over what we both consider is probably the best place we’ve ever been to. We agree it probably doesn’t get much better than this.

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Photos

Ancient wash house.
That’s the staircase to our apartment in the top left hand corner