Northwest Sicily
When my family picked Sicily as our summer holiday destination the sense of excitement was immediate and I could not have agreed more with the choice of decision! My first experience of this beautiful island had been shared with friends as a 20-year-old and those memories are still vivid today. At that time, we were camping in Salina, a tiny Aeolian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily, spending the days lying on the beach and going around on our Vespas, and the evenings sitting at the bar with the locals and being part of the summer village fairs. As with most of Italy, the smells, colours and sounds really do stay with you. One of my fondest memories was staying out all night waiting until early morning for the bakery to open to eat some freshly made croissants.
In my mind I have always associated Sicily with sunshine, invitingly cobalt blue sea, caponata, granita con brioche and village fairs. I had always dreamt of going back one day, and my second visit would only reinforce these beautiful images and the desire of returning once again.
This time, the destination of our family trip was the main island itself. Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea (it is bigger than Wales) and it comprises many little islands scattered around its coast – the Aeolians, Egadi, and Pelagie islands, Pantelleria and Ustica. The ‘Triangular Island’ (Sicily is known locally as , the Triangle) lies at the heart of the Mediterranean, off the toe of the boot of Italy. It is surrounded by the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Seas and is separated from the Italian region of Calabria only by the 3km of
