Isola Lipari
Persevere
Pat and Bruce
Mon 10 May 2010 19:58
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38:26.6N 14:57.8E
The Aeolian Islands, located north of Sicily are
volcanic in origin and some of the islands still have activity. Seven
islands comprise the group, Filicudi, Alicudi, Panarea, Salina, Lipari, Volcano
and Stromboli. There are active volcanoes on a couple of the islands with
Stromboli being active for the last 2,000 years. Lipari is the largest
island and has been inhabited since 5,000 BC. We went to Lapari for the
simple reason it has the only protected marina on the islands. All the
other marinas are small and fine if the winds are in the right
direction. If not, it usually requires a move to another marina or bay to
anchor.
Suprising to us was that the town of Lipari was
much larger and better supplied than we expected. It has a better
Supermercato (supermarket) than Tropea and has several butchers. Now this
is important as finding decent beef, poultry, etc can be difficult. Most
of the area has plenty of fish but land based items seem hard to find. The
town also has two small chandlers with most items of need
available.
Lipari being inhabited for so long has a Castle and
and St Bartholomew Cathedral. Of course as with other areas the ownership
changed several times with the Arabs, Normans, Turks, etc. Things were
stolen and re-purchased back by the locals.
We had decided to make Lipari a stopover on the way
to Palermo. Just spending two nights and one day in the area. As an
afterthought that is too little time. With all the islands to see, lava
flows at night, hot springs, hot mud bathes claiming to cure everything, we will
stop back on our way to Riposto after Palermo.
One piece of advice it to use a taxi to get from
the marina to town. It is not a long walk but there is no sidewalk and the
cars and scooters do not give much room to pedestrians.
 Marina in the distance, taken from across the bay
at the castle
 Main street Lipari
 Ceramics everywhere in this part of the
world
 First for us, a 24 hour pharma vending
machine.
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