Don't mention the Mafia

The guidebooks warn tourists in Sicily to not mention the Mafia. We didn’t and we never would.

Imagine what it would feel like to be a local and having strangers constantly reminding you of the stain of one regrettable thread of their community. They themselves need to sort that out and bring what they want into the open, when and where the time is right.  So it was a joy to land at Palermo’s Falcone-Borsellino Airport to find it had been named to honour the memory of the two leading anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino who were murdered by the Sicilian Mafia in 1992.  A plaque features their portraits bears the inscription “Giovanni Falcone–Paolo Borsellino–Gli Altri–L'orgoglio della Nuova Sicilia” (“Giovanni Falcone–Paolo Borsellino–The Others–The Pride of the New Sicily”). [Source]

We all headed for Sicily for 10 days after a wonderful week at our family’s home base in Rome. It was refreshing to land under the rugged mountains at Palermo’s airport and drive the coast route to Cefalù. The tunnels through the steep coastal margin were boggling, even a bit scary, for a New Zealand country bumpkin – we passed through 10 times more tunnels in that journey than even exist in New Zealand (Extra photo).