Day 121 to 122 - 28th to 1st March- Sicily

Point of departure: Tunis, Africa

Point of arrival : Palermo

Accommodation: Casale del Principe (Agriturismo), www.casaledelprincipe.it

Km travelled today: 240km Cum: 21 989km (0km gravel cum 4 649km)

Countries so far: 12/16

Where to next? Adrano

No of photos: 46 (cum 5 559)

Buon giorno Sicilia and Europe, the last leg of our incredible journey!

The ferry arrived in Palermo at 12h30 (4 hours late). It again felt a little disorganised, although our inability to understand many of the announcements (Arabic and Italian only) may have contributed to this. Nevertheless, after discovering that we had to complete passport formalities on board, we were able to extricate the Beast from the dozens of cars in the ferry's hull and disembarked.

After a couple of false starts from the port of Palermo, with the assistance of the polizia (can't remember where we placed our Italian map) we finally found the road southwest to San Giuseppe de Jato to our wonderful accommodation at Casal del Principe (20km south west of Palermo) - a Sicilian "farmhouse". We spent the afternoon with a glass of wine, and about 200 Italian diners (bearing in mind this is Sunday now), and the beautiful views of the San Giuseppe valley. While there was much that we enjoyed about Tunisia, it made a nice change to be in Europe.

After a wonderful dinner at the Casal del Principe (the full Italian works including a carafe of red wine and a log fire) we were once again fairly early to bed.

Day 122 - We visited Cefalu a charming fishing village, with a medieval feel to it, on the east coast of Sicily facing the Tyrrhenian sea, overlooked by a large rocky outcrop, with its Norman Cathedral (built in the mid 12th century) dominating the centre of the village.

We quickly slipped into the Scilian way of life with a leisurely pasta lunch, after visiting the Cathedral and strolling the narrow cobbled streets with its geranium boxes and laundry.

Then back to Palermo for couple of hours wandering the streets and giving Marina a chance to sass out the fashion stores and catch any late season bargains - after all, it has been four months of shopping deprivation. We then hit Palermo rush hour which added considerably to the challenge of driving in the city, but we found our way back to the freeway, all on our own, and after a quick stop for food, returned to our "hotel".