S I C I L Y

Earlier this month I got back from one of the most relaxing holidays I've ever had -  a week in beautiful Sicily. Seven days of sun, beaches, the Mediterranean Sea and, most importantly, A LOT of delicious food.

Home for the week was a lovely villa on the outskirts of Palermo. Most days we drove to different (stunning) beaches - Magaggiari, Mondello, San Vito Lo Capo - along the north west coast. We drank (giant) aperol spritzs and ate brioche gelato (yep, that's two scoops of a-mazing icecream in a brioche bun); I swam in the sea six days out of seven! We went to an outdoor club and danced under the stars; we had a 1am walking tour of Palermo city; I tried every type of sicilian pastry and snack (savoury + sweet) - arancini, panelle, crocche, cannoli.

One of our friends is Sicilian and his parents, very kindly, cooked for us twice - once in our villa and once in their top floor apartment in Palermo (the views from the terrace were incredible). I don't need to tell you how awesome it was to have home cooked italian food. A quick note on the food: 5 - 7 courses long, the trick is NOT to fill up on the antipasti, which, might I add, is actually impossible because it's all so delicious. On our last night we went to a seafood restaurant, the starters alone consisted of: oysters, prawns, tuna steak, caponata, swordfish, squid, mussels, the sicilian equivalent of whitebait, sardines and a calamari salad. There was no menu at the restaurant, the staff just brought out what had been caught the day before, we even met the fishermen who caught it all!

To get as much holiday as possible out of our seven days away, we spent a few hours in Rome on a long stopover back to Heathrow. It was boiling hot in Rome, the same temperature as Sicily (which is pretty unpleasant when you can't go for a swim in the sea to cool down), and insanely crowded. A few of the friends we were with hadn't been to Rome before so we did a whistle-stop tour of some of the sights (colosseum, trevi fountain, roman forum). It was FULL to bursting with tourists, way too crowded for me. I'd been before in February (10 years ago) and that was much more bearable. Still, I glad blue stopped by Rome, if only for the colosseum and a walk around.

And now for some favourites...
Favourite food: a v.tough choice between cannoli and our friends' mum's homemade caponata...so I'll go with both!

Favourite day: Sunday. We drove to Trapani to catch a ferry to the island of Favignana, hired bikes and spent the day cycling around the island in search of wild beaches. The first place we stopped, Cala Rossa, had the most spectacular sea I've ever seen, impossibly clear and blue! After a couple of hours of swimming and basking in the sun we cycled to the town for icecream (naturally), before stopping off at another beautiful beach for more, you guessed it, sea swimming.

Favourite beach: Faraglioni di Scopello. It's not technically a beach as there's no sand but the water there was beautiful. The affectionately named, Dolce & Gabana beach (due to the fact it looks similar to where they film their TV adverts, though no actual tiny-white-underwear sporting adonises were actually seen), was the last beach we went to. It boats lots of shade and v.friendly stray cats, but what made it my favourite was the sea and little caves in between and underneath the rocks which you could swim through, it felt like another world.

Writing this now, in my chilly office at work opposite a window view of grey building under grey sky, it almost feels like I dreamt the whole thing up...

But I didn't! It's real and I can't reccommend Sicily enough, you should see it for yourselves :)