Cefalù: that’s amore
In the summer of 2006 Italy was winning the World Cup. One evening that June in Naples, during one of the games, I met a boy (yes in Italy at 30 years old they are still boys!). His name was Massimo and he lived in Cefalù. A few weeks later, in order to see him again I boarded a flight and went to Sicily. I arrived in the evening at the train station in Cefalù and I still remember the smell, the sweet perfume of flowers mixed with the salt air. My second memory is of a seaside restaurant (quite literally on the sea) where I ate a fabulous plate of pasta with eggplant, swordfish and mint – which to this day remains one of my favorite dishes.
View of Cefalù from the pier.
Aside from the scents and the tastes, Cefalù is also delight for the eyes. Strolling the historic center I found myself in front of the cathedral in the piazza surrounded by palm trees. A bit further on is the pier from which you can see the town from the sea (by now you’ve seen this skyline in every tourist photo of Palermo and Sicily, without realizing that it is indeed Cefalù).
The pier seemed already familiar to me, because I had seen it before. It is featured in one of the most romantic scenes of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. This is my favorite Italian film and one that you must see before you come to Cefalù. There is a scene in the movie when the main character’s love interest finally returns and they kiss in the rain. In the last few years, the open air cinema has been restored in the same place, just like in the film!
Nuovo Cinema Paradiso
And then, naturally, there is the sea. I’d say I’m a fan, rather a fanatic. I could pass entire days in the water. Where the historic center ends, the boardwalk starts or vice versa, depending on your point of departure. And since that first time 17 years ago I still have a preferred spot on the beach. Always the same spot, a bit hidden and never discovered by anyone else except in high season. The beach is very long and sandy with different places to lay claim to your own spot, some parts more rugged than others. I’ve had the good fortune to visit almost all of the Mediterranean coast and I have to say that it’s difficult to find any place like Cefalù where it is so easy to access the sea and where the water is so crystal clear and transparent.
Another beautiful sunset over the sea in Cefalù.
From that moment, marked with the scent of flowers and the taste of mint in the pasta, many more kisses and many more dips in the crystal clear water followed. I return every year, more than once, practically in every month of the year. My favorite time is the beginning and end of the summer. It’s a bonus that in Sicily the summer basically starts at the end of April and ends in October. I love to open the season there at the beginning of May, when the days are already long and the sun sets on the sea. It’s so romantic that there is always a flurry of photographers there to immortalize it with their cellphones, but also professionals photographers as well (another film set in Cefalù that is a must see: Il Regista di Matrimoni / The Wedding Director).
And each year I carve out a week for a vacation in September by the sea, when it is still fully summer there but without the madness of the tourist season.
Massimo often says that he doesn’t know if I go to Cefalù because I love him or if I stay with him because I love Cefalù … as we say in Italian: the truth is somewhere in the middle.