This is a lovely, well designed and attractively furnished villa about ten minutes from Cefalu up on a quite hillside dotted with pine trees and looking out over the azure Tyrrhenian sea.
The kitchen and the living/dining room are generously sized and the kitchen is properly equipped. Vincenzo's family kindly left a wide selection of store cupboard ingredients as well as some bottles of water. (The villa is supplied with well water, which is fine for washing but best not to drink).
We stayed in October, when the weather was mainly sunny but changeable. It was a bit chilly at night in the hills, so it was really comforting to be able to light a roaring log fire in the living room. When the sun shines, as it usually did for us, you can fling open the French windows at the front of the villa and let the breeze waft through. The villa is surrounded by a patio area with a selection of toys which kept our children happily occupied.
Vincenzo, and his friend Stefano who greeted us and showed us to the villa, were both very helpful and friendly, and easy to communicate with.
The plumbing and electricity at the villa are a bit idiosyncratic, but once you get used to how everything works they are fine. The bedrooms are all of a good size with plenty of storage space, although it would have been better to have had a proper double bed than two singles pushed together - and perhaps a softer mattress.
Cefalu itself is a pretty town with a decent beach, an attractive harbour and a splendid cathedral which is tucked under a steep cliff. I can imagine that it gets quite busy in summer, but in October it was relaxed but far from dead. There are a couple of excellent supermarkets in the town.
It is also possible to make trips into the Madonie nature reserve (although we found it strangely difficult to find family-friendly walking trails) and to the ancient Greek archaeological site of Himera. We really liked Castelbuono, which is up in the mountains, and ate delicious mushroom themed food at a restaurant there called Nangalarruni.
If you are lucky, you will catch a glimpse of the white barn owl which lives in a hole in the roof and swoops around the villa at dusk.