Islands & coast
Route Naples to Palermo, then the coast lines
Time 10 days
Season September
Notebook no. 22
You can reach Sicily by train, in a carriage that is rolled onto a ferry at Villa San Giovanni, and one day I will. This time I took the overnight boat from Naples and woke up to Palermo: the Ballarò market already shouting, pomegranates in pyramids, a man selling a single kind of cheese from a wheelbarrow.
From there the trains do the work. The coast line east to Cefalù runs so close to the water that spray hits the window. Cefalù is a cathedral, a rock, a beach the length of the town and the slowest train on the island, and I would move there if the trains were faster and I am glad they are not.
