When we told the Italians encountered later on, which corners of Sicily we’d visited so far, just hearing the sound of the name Castellammare del Golfo they always reacted in the same way: delight.
Everyone loves this place. The place where we found ourselves sheerly by accident. We hadn’t planned to stay there. Yes, of course, I’d heard the name before but I didn’t think that visiting Castellammare is a must. So quite by accident we ended up in a lovely seaside town.
As the name suggests, once there was a castle there. The castle by the sea. As many of similar Mediterranean castles, after years it’s become a town. Today, it’s a pretty popular place for recreation.
The town is charming. Located on the seafront among the rocks, it itself stays on quite a high cliff. In a small cove there is a little harbour with fishing boats and ten tourist bars. After returning from fishing, the fishermen set up their quarries on the tables by their boats and around the noon the street turns into a bustling market, where the locals can admire today’s trophies with great interest.
We found a relatively cheap pizzeria and then looked for a place to stay. The choice was situated only a few dozen metres from the harbour, a hill. It was a piece of untouched land full of stones with a fairly steep slope. On the right side, there was a house, on the left side, there was a house, and we were just left to hope that no one would kick us off. And no one did 🙂
After breakfast at the harbour we made a walk to the other end of the town. There, in front of our eyes appeared a vast, sandy beach. It stretched to the horizon and there wasn’t even a single soul. In blissful peace and quietness, and in the pleasant but not too hot sun we spent the next few hours. The clouds and approaching rain finally put us off. It was the sign that there came the right time to head for Palermo.
Hitchhiking tips:
From the beach in Castellammare del Golfo we were heading for the road that leads to Palermo. As putting your thumb up doesn’t require much effort we quickly managed to catch a car. A nice couple gave us a ride to the petrol station at the exit of the town.
From Castellammare del Golfo to Palermo we caught a car in one minute. Almost immediately at our station there stopped Salvatore, a non-speaker in any language known to us hiper-kind middle-aged man. He was going directly to Palermo, where he lived. Speaking a little Italian A. managed to keep a conversation going really well. I had to wait another two days to make my language skills reach a communicative level. But in the end: there is nothing that teaches a language like hitchhiking.
Related articles
- From Erice to Palermo or licking the northern coast by car (backpackingheels.wordpress.com)
- Erice – Fairy Tale Town and a Horde of Tourists (backpackingheels.wordpress.com)
- We are back from Sicily (backpackingheels.wordpress.com)
Backpacking heels 