Mondello/Palermo
Mor Toad / Moy Toad
David and Jocelyn Fawcett
Sun 24 Sep 2017 16:42
13:28.27E
The bay at Mondello was indeed a good anchorage low rise buildings ashore and either end rocky hills one end referred to as Mount Pellegrino which separates the bay from Palermo. It's small seaside town and obviously an escape for people from Palermo but thankfully we are out of season and the beach was busy but not crowded. Apparently Mondello used to be a swampy marsh but was made into town for the people of Palermo and there are quite a few elegant houses along the front which are referred to as Liberty - Style - Italian Art Nouveau and in the centre of the bay on stilts is a large building and at either end it has a number of beach huts with a ladder down into the sea and the central area is a grand 2 story building which through the binoculars showed it was a very elegant restaurant upstairs and a dining area on the first floor. From the boat at night it was quite magical and all it needed was someone singing Italian opera from the balcony across the bay and that would have been wonderful. We could just hear the piano .
The following morning we were able to swim round the boat - joy and a pleasant temperature after swimming in the river back in Cornwall 23-24 deg. compared with 16-17 deg. which was the first swim since we arrived a week ago. We then took the dinghy into the harbour to go ashore but after we'd raised the anchor and moved the boat as we realised we'd anchored inside the line of buoys instead of outside ( the Italian rule of being 300metres from the shoreline and we didn't want to get fined.! We had a quick walk round the town but not a lot to see and we checked whether we could walk up Mount Pellegrino but apparently only from the Palermo side and we would have had to get several buses to achieve that so decided to walk along the beach right round to the other side and back again. On the way back stopped to have lunch in the restaurant of the Art Deco building on stilts. An enjoyable treat.
They obviously like their beach huts but many were being dismantled - end of season
The next morning we had another swim in these beautifully clear waters before setting sail eastwards. We were also driven away by a lot of noise coming from the beach- music and people as there was some type of competition going on involving a lot of young people charging up and down the beach and into the water
What I haven't mentioned is when we were coming from Cape St Vito past the Zingarro Nature reserve on our way to Scapello it was very noticeable that there had been quite severe fires on the mountainside and again once we got to Castellamare above the town the hillsides were very blackened and I do remember hearing about the fires in Sicily on the news. Pretty extensive and must have been very scary for the residents of the small villages along the way.
from my iPad