Living it up in Cefalu: A week at Il Gabbiano

As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to stay in a villa in Italy.

It just sounds so incredibly romantic … staying near a small town in an old and crumbling building, strolling to the local shops or markets each morning stopping to have a chat to the providores along the way, eating dinner outside under a grapevine on a summer’s evening, and whiling away the hours doing not much of anything.

Bliss…

Trouble is, they’re a bit on the expensive side. But when our honeymoon was looming , and we were planning to spend part of it in Italy, I thought why not? There’s not going to be a better time to splurge.

So we booked Il Gabbiano in Cefalu through The Thinking Traveller for a week in early July. The Thinking Traveller

Our days fell into a lovely rhythm. We’d have breakfast on the front terrace …

Then wander into town (about 20 minutes away) to stock up on provisions for the day. First stop the fish shop because they always sold out of the good stuff early.

Then the bakery (recommended to us by the fishermen) to get still-warm ciabatta, and then to the deli and fruit stalls to getwhatever else we fancied eating that day.

We had access to two coves from the villa, one of them private.

They were advertised as beaches, but being Australian and there being no sand, we scoffed at that and called them by their rightful name – rocky coves. And then went and bought reef shoes to ward off potential spearings from the sea urchins.

We almost always went to the private cove which was a long walk down but had nice rock platforms for sunbaking. The water was crystal clear and would have been great for snorkelling – but there wasn’t anything much to see (we tried).

After lunch on the front terrace …

… we’d go back to the cove for more lolling about in the sea.

Some days we went on an excursion (I’ll write about our day trips in another post), but mostly we read books (me) or fished (Mr Travelling Pantaloni) in the afternoons

Until it was time for our pre-dinner G&T and snacks on the top terrace, which eventually rolled into dinner …

… and then an evening passegiata in Cefalu, sometimes accompanied by gelato.

Dreamy days indeed…

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Until next time, safe travels,

The Travelling Pantaloni