We’re making our way off Sicily and heading to the Eolian Islands. First stop on our journey is Lipari. To get there from Cefalù, now known to us as the quintessential beach town, we first had to drive to Milazzo. That's when we learned an essential lesson about navigating. You see, in our travels, we tend to set Google Maps to avoid routing us through toll roads. Our previous experience with them is that they are often too automated, meaning it will either:
- use your car license plate to charge your rental car company who will, one day, charge it back to you with an enormous handling fee, or
- they’ll require exact change and we never carry money around.
Now, on our way to Cefalù, we missed the exit on the highway before it became a toll road and went on it (for two exits). The system was clean, efficient and had a nice attendant to give you back change.
I’m telling you all this as our original plan was to get up very early and drive for three and a half hours to Milazzo, but during the previous dinner, I had the idea of seeing how using the toll road would affect our driving time. A three-and-a-half-hour drive came down to a one-and-a-half-hour drive! That’s two hours in our day we can use to sleep and build a buffer in our schedule to catch our boat, which departed around 13:00 that day. Boy, we’re happy to pay the almost 7€ to gain those two hours. Also, the drive was through a marvel of civil engineering, with many tunnels and bridges spanning deep gorges between the mountains.
We left our car in Milazzo with some difficulty, as our rental company's port office has no parking. You have to hope there will be room, or do as many Italians do and double-park (as polite Canadians, we would never risk blocking someone, so we choose not to do that). The boat ride, on the other hand, was much, much easier than expected.
Years ago, when we first came to Sicily, we decided it would be fun to do a day trip to Vulvano, one of the nearby Volcanic Islands. We departed from Milazzo with empty stomachs, and very happy we did, as the sea was choppy and we had a ride in the front of what we nicknamed a puke boat. What we realized when Karine booked our trip to Lipari is that the stop right before Vulcano is Lipari. We were taking the same puke boat to do pretty much the same distance. We were bracing ourselves for an ordeal, but we had nothing but a smooth ride, and, spoiler alert, we would have only smooth rides on those boats throughout our stay in the Aeolian Islands.
Lipari itself can be construed as a beach town. It is by the water, and the beach seems easy to reach. It is strewn with pebbles and is nothing like Cefalù, with its sandy beaches. We expected most of the restaurants to be near the water and the port (walking along the main street from the port would give you that impression, too), but all the good restaurants (or at least the highly rated ones) are in a small Vico (alley) in town. They all have beautiful walled gardens and offer outside dining, of course. Our first find was Lipari Garden next to a cat sanctuary. It’s essentially a bar that provides a few plates alongside its large selection of cocktails and a modest selection of wine. We enjoyed the beautiful, warm weather under a tree in wooden beach chairs. It was pretty enjoyable, and the finger food at Aperitivo was excellent.
