For Måns’ 40th birthday, I took him and the kids on a surprise trip to Sicily. They had no idea where we were going until we got to the airport!
We rented a beautiful house with a 5 minute walk to our own private beach. We also could walk to the little village of Scopello and have lunch or drive 10 minutes to Castellmarre del Golfo, a bigger town.
We visited Palermo. Our first thought upon entering Palermo was, “We should probably get out of here before it gets dark.”
On another day, we took a ferry from Trapani to Favignana, one of the Egadi islands. We tried to rent scooters to drive to the beach, but after seeing me almost crash mine in the first 2 seconds I got on it, the owner simply said, “no” and rented us a car instead.
And then after spending the day in the hot sun and on the beach, we took the ferry back and went up on a mountain to the town of Erice. Erice is a mediaeval town which is so high up that it usually has its own personal cloud. The temperature at the bottom of the mountain was 25c (77f) and the temperature at the top of the mountain was 15c (59f). We looked completely ridiculous in our shorts, but it was amazing to be inside a cloud.
We of course passed the volcano Mount Etna, which I thought the boys would love, when in fact they were terrified we would all get covered in lava. So we skipped that tour.
The day before we left, we went to the beautiful city of Cefalu and spent a night in Gardini Naxos. It was a wonderful trip. When we all boarded the plane home, dressed in our summer clothes and sweating from the 27 (80) degree weather, the pilot announced that we would arrive in Stockholm to 10c (50f) and rain. The entire plane groaned.
