Before you travel to a new place you have to make certain assumptions as to what you’ll need. So it was this time when we hired a car for the whole two week period. To date we have used it only twice. Once to get from the airport to the first hotel and the second from the first to the second hotel. Rather than go out and visit places with the car we have relied on public transport which has worked really well. It has been less stressful and has allowed me to finish a book and write this blog post as we travel back from Ragusa.
It’s fair to say that the only reason we are in Sicily is because we saw it on the Inspector Montalbano TV series and fell in love with the place. The series is set around the (fictitious) town of Vigata which in reality is Ragusa where we traveled today. It is a two hour train ride from Siracusa but we almost didn’t make the train as we were on the wrong platform – only in Italy could they have TWO platform 2s in different parts of the station! The train was interesting in that it was two tiny carriages and was full of tourists, the majority of whom got off at Noto (a trip for a different day). It rumbled it’s way across the Sicilian countryside until it reached Ragusa.
Ragusa is really two separate towns: Ragusa Superiore and Ragusa Ibla. Let me tell you there is nothing “superior” about Ragusa Superiore at all whereas on the other hand Ragusa Ibla is stunning. “Superiore” in this case means “higher”, much, much higher but the views down across Ibla are superb.
Because the trains are so infrequent we had a full six hours in Ragusa and that was more than enough time. For somewhere so beautiful there was hardly anyone about and very few shops which I found very odd. This also made it difficult to find an ice cream!
Like most TV series only parts of Montalbano are filmed in Ragusa but we were able to see the cathedral (Duomo) and the views which feature so prominently. We weren’t able to find the bus stop where Salvo picks up the stroppy Livia but all in all it was a great day.