Blog Six – Ragusa, Sicily

Published by Alastair Reid on October 6, 2019October 6, 2019

Ragusa, Sicily [28th – 30th September 2019]

Our last train journey of the trip took us to Ragusa, climbing higher through the Sicilian hills to the scene of many an episode of Inspector Montalbano.

When we arrived at the typically overgrown station, we had to actually cross the train tracks, which was a little disconcerting. Fiona took her suitcase over, then came back to help me avoid a bad lift for my back. Unfortunately, she hadn’t secured her case properly on the other platform. so it toppled backwards onto the tracks – for the first and only time eliciting help from a couple of local men.

As I crossed, a train loomed on the horizon, but we managed it to the station building unscathed. When we exited from the station it was like walking into a ghost town. Not a vehicle in sight, just a kindly elderly gentleman who came up for a chat, in Italian.

We eventually phoned a taxi, and were whisked away to our AirBnB in Ragusa Ibla – a beautifully refurbished local house on two floors, with another, slightly more easily negotiated, spiral staircase. The space was full of artistic Italian flourishes, from the Ragusa-themed wallpaper, to the vaulted and sculpted plaster ceiling, and white candelabra with red candles – that was just the bedroom. The house is more designer than practical, but it was comfortable and superbly located, a few metres from the main square, Piazza Duomo.

Montalbano has clearly worked wonders for the local economy, and Ragusa gives off an air of prosperity. However, restaurants and cafes, even in and around the Piazza Duomo, proved to be good and very reasonable, certainly for Italy. Our first visit to the Piazza coincided with a wedding (as in Oporto last year) in which the bride and her bridesmaids posed for the wedding photographer, the women looking the epitomy of Italian chic. The males present had almost uniformly chiselled good looks, and were decked out in typically sharp-suited Sicilian fashion.

Ragusa seems to be a favoured day trip destination, so the Ibla district fills up with tourists during the day, and empties to a more manageable population in the evening. We took a trip round Ibla on one of those slightly embarassing wee tourist trains, which we would normally avoid, but it turned out to be a brilliant way to see around the winding narrow streets, which would have taken hours on foot, in the heat. It must be odd to live constantly on the side of a hill, and always to have to negotiate steep steps or slopes to get anywhere.

Above Ragusa Ibla, on a second, higher hill, is Ragusa Superiore, where the bourgouisie set up a “new town” in a safer position, after Ibla was virtually destroyed by an earthquake in 1693. From up there, they could look down, literally and metaphorically, on the poor folk who had to make do in Ibla – now we can look down, to take photos of the quite stunning panoramas of Ibla’s houses and the surrounding countryside.

A couple of days was a good length of stay for a visit to the beautiful and interesting town of Ragusa, before we had to get ourselves to the bus station, for the trip back to Catania, to catch our flight to Genoa. A quaint system became apparent at Ragusa bus station, whereby a notice in the unmanned ticket office tells you that you have to purchase bus tickets at a local cafe, about 50 metres away. So Fiona trooped off to do so, leaving me guarding the luggage. Turned out all tickets were to be purchased there, except for the journey we were making to Catania. Handy.

Having eventually secured a ticket back at the bus station, for the only journey of our trip which we couldn’t book in advance, we got front row seats for the two hour trip on an excellent road through the Sicilian countryside to Catania.

My dozen favourite images from our stay in Ragusa are included in the gallery below. Click on a thumbnail to see a bigger image.

Image Gallery