And so the travelling in Sicily on to Cafalu
Well we certainly thought we had left plenty of time to navigate our way to our first destination Cefalu but now we were late in leaving (delayed flight and hassle with the car) and short a few quid but hey we are here to travel around so let’s get started.
I don’t know if you have ever driven in Italy but this place is crazy!! People simply do not seem to care about how they drive!!! All over the roads there are cars driving around with dents and scratches and that’s just at the airport… It may have cost a bit extra but boy am I glad we got the extra collision damage insurance even if it is extortionate..
So we get in the car and set off, the roads are in pretty good condition assuming you have your wits about you and can concentrate enough to avoid the insane driver’s one little downside though…the sat nav (borrowed from my dad) sucks! It is slow and the screen isn’t working properly should have really checked that out before we went so on to the mobile phone it is.
Now luckily we knew roughly how much this could cost and budgeted for that, the network also lets you know by text message when you arrive these days but still make sure you research this before you go or pay the price later!
Once you get onto the motorway and out of the towns and cities the drive along the coast is pretty easy although there are a lot of tunnels and some are closed it is a little different when you start to get to the town that you want to go to as the sat nav seems to drag you around some random stretches of road.
On the way to Cafalu we took a wrong turn or 2 and night was closing in fast, before we knew it we were heading up a really steep hill with a struggling car and scattered mansions. The roads were like country lanes and the sat nav had NO IDEA where we were or where we were going and we thought we were on a 1 way street as the roads were that narrow.
This is a scary prospect when you are in a foreign country, don’t speak the language and it is getting later into the night. Eventually we just decided to head back down and eventually found our route again, another half hour gone and some unnecessary stress and we just wanted to get there…that was another story!
When we finally made it to where we thought we were heading again the sat nav decided it wanted to drag us around some random streets and we ended up in the sketchiest of places I think I have had to drive down.
We turn down roads barely wide enough to fit that car with people walking about and ended up in a well know street for the locals which has ruins down a hole on the left shielded with a wall of glass and just wide enough to navigate past the wing mirrors. Then you get to the end of the road…
At the end, tightest turn through the smallest gap and after the day we had had our new worst nightmare! Luckily the little old lady sat in the street was well versed in the experience and guided us safely round, was she being nice or was it the several euros we dropped on the floor as we got out?!? I would like to think it was the first point as she said hello when we walked past the next day.
We drove around for what seemed like ages trying to get to where we were staying, even though we called the number. While the people we spoke to were friendly, they spoke little English and offered little guidance.
Eventually we parked up at the sea front, asked about a bit, called the owner of the B&B and found the poorly signposted street that you could not park on. We checked in and then had to move the car to the station for a free car park and finally settled down for a well earner beer and some food at 11pm at night.
