Summer 2011 : Palermo to Ragusa : Day 8
We woke up at 5am to prepare to catch the 7am bus travelling 4 hours to Ragusa. Our next Sicilian destination.
Today was rather eventful, firstly on our way to the bus station in Palermo….WE CAME ACROSS TRAILS OF BLOOD! It started off with a bloody towel then there were trails of it along the road…….scary and freaky, especially since Palermo is mafia kingdom, no? But since there wasn’t masses of blood, we concluded that probably something boring happened like someone broke their arm or leg and was heading home or to get help…..
Secondly, on the bus there were police officers with their full outfit on including all the guns, batons etc……being us we created a story that they were on the bus to carry out a secret mission and didn’t want others to know so by going on the bus it was a distraction..oh yeah!
Thirdly, Ragusa is such a magical and beautiful city. Imagine those cities that you see in japanese cartoons houses perching on hills and then suddenly they decide to move and the whole city floats and shifts. Ragusa is a magnificent city.
Lastly we had the most awesoming, uhhhmazing, ubersome pistachio ice cream ever. It was so creamy, light and clean. You know how sometimes ice cream leaves a residue afterwards, well this one doesn’t. I LOVE PISTACHIO ICE CREAM. We had torrone flavour too and that wass ubberism too!
Anyway back to our day, we dropped off our luggage and went to explore! Well, I meant eat. We took our host advice and went to Caffe Italia and ordered this:
Though the aubergine dish was a bit too salty for our liking.
First sightseeing stop was off to see the Three Bridges, they all link the two towns together. Old and new. (Btw we are standing on one bridge, hence the photo only shows two bridges.)
Ragusa is quite small but charming little place, in fact Ragusa was our favourite destination in Sicily because I love baroque style anything, partner in crime likes places which are much more relaxing and we both love Ragusa Ibla area. We didn’t feel that 2 days here was enough!
Next we strolled to Ragusa Ibla. When I say stroll, I mean walk down thousands of steps to see the most charming, quaint, beautiful town ever. Maybe I haven’t travelled around Europe much where there may be many sites like this, but to me Ragusa Ibla was just breathtaking.
Duomo, the very expensive restaurant Michelin star place is here too. We didn’t go in of course but we walked past it and went straight to Gelati DiVini where you can have wine flavoured gelato.
The place where we choose to have dinner was rather secretive; they didn’t have a huge sign displaying the restaurant name nor was the number clearly placed on the building. Upon entering the door, you are greeted by someone who will phone the restaurant upstairs and then escort you up. Then once up the flight of stairs the waiter or waitress will greet you and show you to your table, on this particular night……the restaurant was empty.
La Cuisine dell’Antica Badia was the restaurant choice. Despite it being empty which tends to make a tourist think twice before visiting, but we weren’t scared off by that. The food and service was lovely, the ambience was lacking a bit due to the fact we were the only customers. I can imagine this place to be wonderful if it had a full house.
Maybe we were the only customers there so we got special treatment but they gave us freshly baked fennel seed bread and starters on the house.
The starter was watermelon jelly with watermelon foam on top, I’ve never really had watermelon for a dinner starter but it was refreshing. The 3 different cheeses on skewers I didn’t eat them so gave them to partner in crime, I’m then told the cheese is very good.
For mains I ordered Shrimps with pistachio pasta, the shrimps turned out to be langoustines grilled with a small squeeze of lemon juice on top. Delicious! This is one of the reasons I love Sicily, they understand that fresh seafood doesn’t need all the herbs and all. Simple really is the best way forward. The pistachio pasta didn’t have a very strong pistachio taste but maybe it’s hard to make a full on pistachio tasting pasta? Instead you could taste pistachio in the pasta, but it was only a slight hint.
Partner in crime ordered Sea Urchin pasta, again, but this time with almond oil. Mhhhhmmmmmm, why are sea urchin pasta so yummy in Sicily?
First day in Ragusa done and we love it.
