I dont know how I've done it but I've done it again. Touched down in paradise yet again and this time even been told I am the princess. There really is a castle in the garden. And I am really here. Somehow I'm here in paradise. I think it is real, it seems too perfect to be real.
I arrived by bus, train and taxi. I was on the bus for a long a time, not because it is a long bus trip, I caught the right bus but going in the wrong direction so I had to go all the way to the end of the route and then all the way back to the other end of the route. It was sort of like taking the hop-on-hop-off bus tour of Palermo except in an ordinary bus. I got to the train station with the train leaving in two minutes. But I caught it and it was running 5 minutes late anyway.
I got off the train in Cefalu - 'shefaloo' - and waited for a taxi. I grabbed a nice tomato and cheese bread roll for lunch while I waited. The taxi drove along a winding road along the the sea-side. Thats the Mediterranean sea, a more beautiful blue I have rarely seen, at least not that shade of green/blue. [unnesesary interjection - the blue of the whitsunday sea is yet to be surpassed in my eyes]. The taxi wound its way up a hill through an orchard and I was greeted by the cutest young Italian man you could ever be hoped to be greeted by. He booked me in and invited me to a special luncheon they are having tomorrow - tomorrow is easter Sunday. I asked if I might be able to eat dinner there in the evening. He went and asked a lady - an elegant lady in the kitchen called Rosie who said that would be ok and her husband, Francesco said at 7:00. Then the young Italian man - Dominico, showed me to my room. He carried my 30kg bag for me (haha sucker) and then I went for a ramble over the grounds. I kept meeting the Dominico as I wandered through the gardens of the villas. I said to him "we must be the only two people on earth; we keep meeting each other". He picked me fruit off the trees.
I can't do justice in words to describe this place and how I felt to be walking through it. It over looks the sea to the front and behind is a mountain side covered in grass, and citrus trees in flower and fruit and olive trees, and wild flowers, purple peas and yellow clover, an old cement pond with running water and a blue pool over looking the blue Mediterranean.
This morning I was wondering where to stay. There was an email offering accomodation. This place said it had one single room left, I had been told to go to to Cefalu and the villa is in Cefalu so I booked it. Pretty cool to be able to book into paradise via email.
I did a little yoga, it is so quiet and self contained in this place, a private retreat. At 7pm I went down for dinner. They asked if I would like to sit outside in the garden for dinner to watch the sea, the sunset, with my castle in the back ground because tonight I am the Princess. I had the lovely girl Cinzia serving me, with four other people working in the kitchen to make my extrordinary five course dinner - I am the only guest. A banquet for a Princess. Cinzia keeps running back to the kitchen to repeat to them what I tell her - I am a yoga teacher from Australia who decided on Friday to jump on a plane and fly over to Italy on Tuesday. They are so amazed. I am of course the beautiful Princess with the pure heart who's subjects love for her kindness.
Superb food, superb Sicilian wine, so superb to be waited on, they each come out in turn from the kitchen bringing me things. We talk about Australia and the Hunter Valley, I showed them some photos of Mirannie Mountain, my old home I had that was a farm. I told them how much I love Italy. After my first course of cheese and pesto watching the sunset, they transported me inside for the next two courses. They took a long time to eat as we had so much to say to each other. As I struggled to finish the third and fourth course they came from the kitchen and invited me to join them all together around a table for thier dinner.
What an amazing evening. We talked, and talked and talked about to love your family no matter what they do to you. We talked about zen and that if you let everything arise naturally everything is perfect and happy and not to worry, be happy. We talked about karate and Kill Bill. We talked about Italy and how I got here, that Italy whistled and I came and that everyone who I am supposed to meet is in the right place at the right time, and Sicily and where I should visit, about Botticelli and Primavera, about all my David's - of course they saw the photos of my fish. And to finish off we clink glasses of desert wine all together over strawberries and cream.
I am so grateful to have been so blessed. It is humbling to have this.
I bought a beautiful scarf this morning from a hawker at Palermo. It is keeping my sore throat warm in bed.
Life doesn't come better than this. Not if you were an emperor or a queen or a king. I don't know how to express it.
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