CEFALU, SICILY | Italy's Most Beautiful Coastal Town 🇮🇹

If I say to you Sicily, what do you think of? Probably the iconic city of Palermo or the picturesque town of Tormina, but what about Cefalu? In this video we're going to discover this beautiful coastal town with its iconic landscape and charming medieval streets and we think by the end of this video you're going to have this destination at the top of your bucket list. For our time in Cefalu we are staying outside of the historic town centre for two reasons. One, it's a little bit cheaper and two, we can park our rental car for free. We visited Cefalu as part of an epic Sicily road trip which we'll link below. Also, being located on the eastern side of the rock meant we had a beautiful 50-minute walk into town which hugged along the coastline. Oh and if you're a cat lover you'll like it here. The entire colony of cats in Cefalu are protected under law and they're more than happy to say hello for snacks. It's a really pretty view but because we have this massive rock it's blocking the sun so the town takes a while to get sun in it. So the town of Cefalu is located on the north coast of Sicily and as you can see we are literally on the coastline. The town is built onto the rocks and the landscape here is so unique which we love about it. They have a path which runs all the way down the town actually through the rocks. If the waves are quite big don't come down here. I can imagine it's quite treacherous but right now it's not too bad and we can see people walking all the way down this path that runs alongside the town. It is absolutely beautiful. Cefalu is really standing out as such a unique destination. Over there I have a lighthouse. I have a huge rock which kind of overlooks the town. It's really iconic here and then we have the beautiful town built onto the cliffs. It is beautiful. How cool is this? Now it is a little bit wavy today but because there's so much rock around here I think this would be a great place to do some snorkeling on a calm day. The water is so clear. It looks so beautiful and inviting. I've got my swimmers in my bag. We might just hop in today. We need to cross down here. Now Cefalu is a medieval town and I don't think that you can see that more than here. Look at it. It's a pathway in this. It looks like a fortress doesn't it? This little building. I think it is. I think it's a bastion. Okay we need to go when the waves aren't crashing. Good luck. The fort was actually a bastion and we have just climbed up to the viewing point and it offers incredible views. It is so clear today. We can see all down the coastline. Cefalu is just a one-hour train ride from Palermo so if you want to base yourself in the city you can surely come up here for a day trip or vice versa. I think a great way to explain Cefalu is charming medieval. The streets are absolutely gorgeous. It's the iconic cobbled lanes with the Juliet balconies and everyone's eating outside. Cefalu actually dates back to Norman rule so it definitely has that medieval influence here and the cathedral here is actually part of the UNESCO world heritage site which we'll go and visit next. Wow this is so beautiful. The gem of Cefalu is this gorgeous cathedral standing behind me. It started construction in 1131. It is an Arab Norman cathedral and you can see that in the architecture. It is beautiful. If I were just to see this I would think I was somewhere in Spain. It has a lot of Arabic connections there but it's free to enter so we're going to go take a look inside. There are so many places to eat here in Cefalu but we have found a little hole in the wall. A nice place called Karma. We got some fresh juice and some brunch food on the way. This is a lovely little spot. It's away from the main square so it's a bit quieter and we're out of the sun so it's nice and cool and shaded. It's really charming. Like all of Cefalu really. Our food's come out and it looks amazing. Yeah super fresh. I just went for a couple of starters. Grilled veggies and bruschetta. Corey's got avocado on pumpkin bread and some eggies. Is it pumpkin or turmeric? I just realized my bread is yellow. Yeah I feel like as much as I love pasta and pizza just a little breather from the pasta and pizza and have some veggies. The dishes are really really tasty. Michelle is sharing her potatoes with me. Thank you. And the dishes are really reasonably priced here. Like some of the I guess like cheapest nice food that we've seen in town. Ranging between like 5 to 10 euros per dish. So Corey still has some room in his belly. No surprise. So we are going to go and sample some classic Sicilian dessert food which is granita and there's a store right opposite. Now I'm not particularly hungry so I'm just going to taste some of Corey's but he chose the flavours. Went with lemon and strawberry which I would never choose. I am a chocolate fiend. I would always choose chocolate or pistachio which I love at the moment but it's simply fruit water and sugar so it's very refreshing. That is very yummy. Let me just try the lemon. The lemon is just that lemony yeah like acidic citrus kick. Oh but if you're hot this would do the job. It would cool you down. It is like if you love slushies and stuff like that this is just essentially a sorbet really. She didn't want any but she was trying to eat it all. I had to steal it back. Very refreshing. I feel like I feel like it's really really fresh yummy fruit. It tastes so fruity but maybe that's the sugar as well. Something that is great about the streets of Cefalu is that it has restricted access for cars so as you're walking around these streets you aren't getting stuck in car traffic. They do have occasional scooters and obviously some cars for residence or deliveries but otherwise you are just wandering the streets and unlike a lot of places where they do allow cars it can really ruin the atmosphere of a place and I love that they don't Well this is it isn't it. This is La Dolce Vita in person. People just enjoying the beach. The temperature is so nice at the moment and that is really surprising because we're at the end of October. It's nearly November in a couple of days and people are still out here enjoying the beach. It's a lovely temperature. The water's clear and the beaches are so accessible. We've got this beach right here which is on the main town and it's right next to this harbour wall which protects the bay. I guess like fishermen can come and do fishing down here as well. There's other beaches around. You've got a beach which goes all the way around the coast towards Palermo as well as the other side of the rock which is the Pescatore port beach. Now some beaches do have those beach clubs which are kind of expensive. I saw one over by where we're staying which is around 60 euros for a day bed but if you don't need a day bed you can enjoy any of these beaches for free. We don't collect souvenirs but we do collect polaroids and I personally collect jewellery. Little mementos are places to go to. Cefalu has loads of gorgeous little boutique stores selling lots of clothes and jewellery so if you like that this is the place. And the other thing which is super nice here is you get this beautiful afternoon light sitting on the town side of the rock so you can just enjoy the afternoon sun down at the beach or if you want you can go and hike up to the top of the old ruins up there. There is a fort, a castle up there which is in ruins but you can visit it for I think five euros and the sun is going to set over that direction. It's just idyllic isn't it? This is such a beautiful end of the day spot. Everyone's just coming down jumping and there's locals just doing their daily lap. Oh we are loving Cefalu. So many of the restaurants here have this crazy little view and little balconies looking out to the ocean. They're kind of all around so any of the streets that run parallel to the beachfront or the seashore you're guaranteed to find a little seaside seating area to enjoy your meal, maybe a cocktail, aperitivo, whatever you fancy. Well that was close but your last entry to the park is three o'clock and it was 2.55 when we arrived so luckily we've got our tickets, five euros each. There's a great little cafe stop and guess what? Karma, the place where we had lunch, supplies the food apparently. This place closes at five so we have two hours to explore. Already we're getting amazing views over the coastline, the beaches down there and I don't think we're even halfway up but Charlotte is already steaming up. She is hot uphill, all uphill and nice hot sun just pounding down on us as we go but let's crack on and see what's at the top. Oh I don't cope with the heat but we're nearly there and the landscape has changed quite a bit. It went from very rocky to very grassy. We have beautiful pine cone trees. Pine cones are very lucky in Sicily. You see them everywhere as a gift, as a decoration. You give them for good luck. That's the area looking down onto where we're staying. Oh excellent. This is the other side of Cefalu. Oh that wind, oh glorious. Charlotte. Are you saying it like that because it's a big drop? Yeah. Oh very nice and lovely. Sunset vibes from here, wow. You're so unsteady aren't you? Just because you're at a high altitude. I don't like it. The views eh? This is definitely I think a great late afternoon adventure because you get that beautiful golden hour going into sunset or even a morning adventure because it can get quite hot throughout the day walking up here. The views from the top of the castle are just incredible. We've got uninterrupted high altitude views of the Mediterranean. If we carry on that way directly north probably we'll end up in Rome but yeah it's amazing. You can just see such vast distances from up here all around the horizon. But yeah we're at the castle now but this is not the only place to discover up here. It also has some archaeological remains a bit further down and I think I can see it and I think we can loop back around to it as we make our way down so we'll head there now. We are in the Temple of Diana. This is a megalithic building. It's the oldest man-made construction on Sicily and it's really cool. I don't know if these are I guess natural formations in the rock but they've got like all these swirly patterns. There was no mortar to hold this building together. It's just the placements of the rocks which you see a lot in these ancient buildings. Like how did they put these together? But I love these beautiful archways, entrances. So much history here, like prehistoric. 2nd to 4th century BC this building dates back to. Wow. It looks like on the inside this is all new and maybe has been repurposed over the years by people who came later but the initial structure that you see when you first come out to the front, this megalithic structure and it's just one big giant jigsaw puzzle. This looks to me what I think Malta would look like. Yeah that's incredible. They do say Sicily is not Italy and it is very unique. I agree with that saying. I don't like it, it's really high. If you do come up here, sunset obviously is such a beautiful time but we've got this amazing view of the old town here, the Duomo right beneath us and this wall just drops away. You can see everything and it's just so beautiful. I love this scene right here with the just golden light reflecting on the terracotta roofs. It's just so Mediterranean, it's so beautiful. And finally we've come to the cross which is the monument which sits above the cathedral and you see it light up at night. It's got all these lights on the front and we'll see it when we're back down in the town. We took a wrong turn and ended up going all the way down these stairs. That led to nowhere. Only closed in 10 minutes. Nine minutes. Nine minutes, oh god. All right let's run. I've just rolled my ankle. Oh you've got to be careful coming down. I was getting a bit carried away with rushing and I rolled it. Oh there's going to be tinder. Well we got out the park two minutes late but the staff were busy trying to find other people lost on the hill so we were all good and we've hobbled into town. Poor Corey has hurt his ankle but it's okay because we have found pasta for dinner and I've got exactly what I wanted which was spaghetti, garlic and chilli. I've been obsessed with this dish since we've been in Italy and Corey's got penne all'arabiata. Penne all'arabiata. And Corey's got some spicy pasta. Yum. That sums up our time here in Cefalu. If you have added this place to your bucket list let us know in the comments below and if you want to see more of Italy maybe check out these vlogs. Thank you so much for watching. Subscribe if you haven't already and we'll see you again soon. Bye.