Cefalu

Tuesday we crossed from Villa San Giovanni to Messina in Sicily.  We timed the crossing well as when we turned up there were no queues and we basically drove straight onto the waiting boat.  Arriving in Messina we stopped for a bite of lunch before continuing our drive towards Cefalu which is on the north coast of the island.  The drive itself was pretty amazing, it seemed that we spent most of it in giant tunnels, it seems the Italians are still spending a lot of money on the road networks in Sicily.

We had booked to stay that night in an Art Hotel, where all the rooms were individually designed and decorated by local artists.  Our room was quite weird, I think it had some sort of weather theme.  It was painted blue with a giant black cloud over the bed which appeared to be raining some sort of nails which were embedded into the walls.  The base of the bed was built out of a hollow steel which rumbled thunder every time one of us clambered in and out, something which I found to be more than a bit annoying, much to Tim's delight.

The hotel was in a pretty little fishing village which once again felt very authentically Italian.  That evening we found what must've been some sort of working mens club where we joined the locals drinking beer and playing cards, until the local veg truck arrived and they all picked up a few supplies and wandered off home to their wives.  Tim and I wandered across the road to a pizzeria which we had watched firing up its pizza oven, so no prizes for guessing what we had for dinner that night.