Southeastern Sicily -- Ragusa, Modica, and Pozzallo

Wednesday,  May 4, 2016

It was wonderful to see the sun shining on our terrace this morning; in general, the weather in Sicily has been unseasonably cool and cloudy most of our days here.  We'd been wondering if our reading of weather expectations this time of year had been faulty, but at breakfast this morning, Paola expressed dismay at the fact that the weather has been quite atypical.  At any rate, today was almost entirely warm and sunny -- to our delight.

Speaking of Paola, I should mention how lovely she has been to us.  Her English is very limited, and our Italian not much better, so she uses a translation app on her phone if we start to stumble.  Today, she'd even written out some phrases to be certain she communicated what she wanted to properly!  She has gifted us with olive oil pressed from her olives, along with some tomatoes and oregano from her garden and we've made wonderful salad to go with a couple of dinners.  We also have her orange marmalade to take with us, and every morning, she gives us a goodie to take on the road; she's a generous hostess and wonderful gardener!

We headed to the interior today, with our first stop in Ragusa, which is actually two towns.  An earthquake in the 17th century destroyed the original town and, while some folks opted to build higher up the mountain, others decided to rebuild on the original site, now known as Ragusa Ibla.  We headed through the upper town to Ragusa Ibla, which appears to just grow out of the mountain, layer upon layer, from bottom to top.  It reminded us of the sassi, cave dwellings, we've seen in Matera, though here the buildings are built on the mountainside, not of it.  Once in the centro storico, we had a wonderful time wandering around yet another harmonious Baroque city, starting with the cathedral dedicated to St. George, who is depicted on horseback slaying the dragon, numerous times in the church -- in paint, stained glass, silver relief, and sculpture.  Outside, the Piazza Duomo could not have been more lovely, its terrazzo pavement spread out at the base of the cathedral's long staircase, and full of restaurants, shops, and palazzi. We enjoyed wandering the town center before heading to yet another town divided in two.

Modica is just a few miles from Ragusa and once rivaled it for power, but eventually lost that contest.  Modica also has an upper and a lower town, but the old and new seem distributed between them. The demarcation in Modica's case was caused by a flood in the early 20th century. It seemed to be a darker, more "tired" town than Ragusa.

While Tom was making a left turn driving up through Modica's narrow streets, a LARGE bus came swinging around in a wide arc from  the street we were attempting to enter; we very nearly wound up occupying the same space -- if you catch my drift.  No sooner had a bit of backing up (involving the row of cars behind us) and careful maneuvering by both Tom and the bus driver resolved the situation than we realized that, right behind that bus was another one, equally large!  Its driver took a different approach, motioning Tom to turn in to the left "lane" of the street, despite the fact that there were cars lined up behind the bus -- all waiting to make that left turn.  This is hard to explain without a whiteboard and an NFL coach's x's and o's, but trust me, it was hair-raising -- even on Tom's bald head! A short time later, while we were having our lunch, he was laughing about the whole thing -- a great part of the travel adventure!  I, on the other hand, could barely envision how my nerves could stand three more weeks of this!

Leaving Modica, we headed for the southern coast and a look at the sea from the promenade at Pozzallo.  Despite the dark clouds that had moved in, the water was almost a florescent blue-green.

Tomorrow, we'll be leaving Sicily by ferry to begin our drive up the length of Italy, so it's a good time to add a couple of notes about our experience on the road here, not that it's likely to be any different on the mainland.  Driving and parking both need to be seen to be believed!  If there are two lanes on a road, a third is often created in the middle by an impatient driver.  Stop signs are frequently stoptional.  Rules about right of way pretty much boil down to "whoever gets there first" and, where in most places roundabouts have "set" rules of ingress and egress, here it's a free-for-all.  To park, cars going in both directions pull in on either side of two-way streets. Parallel parking is a fine ideal, but if it doesn't quite work for lack of space or patience, folks just pull part-way in, nose in, or park at any oblique angle that works.  (Once again, a whiteboard diagram would be helpful here; suffice it to say it can be hard to figure out who's parked and who's in a bumper car pileup!)