Day 49 - Ragusa Ibla

# Campari & Soda: 1, # Gelati: 1

The weather here was pretty ordinary.  Cool, overcast, windy and a little rain around midday.  Again, everyone is saying it is unusally cold and wet for this time of year.   However, given the record rain and floods in Emilia-Romagna, not to mention the 14 deaths, it seems a little precious to be complaining about getting a bit damp.

My B&B here is a bit more upmarket than the places I stayed in during the hike.  I have a large, spacious room with modern fixtures and fittings.  However, it is still Sicily.  For some reason the water cut out last night just before I was getting ready for bed.  I don't mean there wasn't any hot water.  I mean there was no water at all when you turned on the tap.  This is the sort of thing you want to know about before you need to flush the loo, rather than after.  The water was miraculously restored this morning.  My guess is a pump failed or a fuse on a pump blew because it was quickly fixed without need for a plumber.  

The B&B hosts don't actually live on site, but about 5 minutes away.  They showed up this morning around 7:30am to prepare breakfast.  I had specifically said I preferred savory foods for breakfast to sweet things so I only had three pastries on my personal breakfast buffet.  I ate the cannolo because Sicily.

After breakfast I headed out to dutifully admire the views from the various viewing points (easy to do as they were worthy of admiration) and visited a few of the many churches.   Is it just me or are their depictions of St George a dead ringer for Eric Idle?

The weather took a turn for the worse so I swallowed my pride and took a ride on one of those silly tourist trains that tootle around historic city centres.  The commentary was given in Italian and then repeated in English.  I got almost all of the Italian except for the dates.  We were promised information on the history of Ragusa, its famous sites and also on the filming of the Inspector Montalbano TV series.  The only information we got about Inspector Montalbano was a lot of it was filmed here in Ragusa.  I've since discovered the local tourist information office has a free tour on their website of some of the main filming locations in Ragusa and they are all in Ragusa Superiore.  They had some shots of the real locations and the matching scene in the TV show.  The have clearly used a lot of CGI to make the Ragusa buildings look cleaner, brighter and in better repair than they really are.  Or perhaps they just filmed on days with better weather.

I just had a panino for lunch and then went back to my B&B for a nap.  The rest of the city has a siesta so why not me?

After my nap I headed out to a place that had advertised itself as a chocolate factory with free tours and tastings, the ChocoHouse.  There was no manufacturing going on when I went and I don't think they really do make all their chocolate on site.  It just isn't big enough.  However, they had 20 or so different types of chocolate on show that I was free to try.  I was restrained and only tried about a dozen and only bought 4 blocks of chocolate.  They are also a B&B.  It is probably best that I didn't stay there.

After getting the chocolate I just spent some more time exploring the narrow, winding streets here in Ragusa Ibla.  I also visited a bookshop and spent some time with their two cats.  They were not impressed with the attention but as shop cats it is part of their job so they just had to deal.

For dinner I did go to That's A Moro.  It is quite a large restaurant inside and it spread across several rooms.  I was seated at a table in a sort of anteroom that connected two bigger dining rooms.   This provided plenty of Italian practice as the staff kept the menus and reservation book just nearby.  I don't think they realised I understand a lot more Italian than I can speak.  They made some less than flattering remarks about some American diners.  My French friend from Puglia would have heartily agreed with them.

For dinner I started with the pasta special of the day which was a type of ravioli filled with ricotta and spinach and topped with a zucchini cream sauce with bacon in it.  This wasn't very nice as they managed to create a dish where the overwhelming taste was of zucchini.  This takes skill as zucchini doesn't have a lot of flavour.

For main I had pork fillet which was wrapped in bacon and topped with rosemary.  It was accompanied by baked potatoes and more zucchini (they are in season).  This was all a bit bland.  For dessert I had a Sicilian cassatina.  This was a thin slice of sponge cake, topped with a pastry cream and coated with marzipan and decorated with a glace cherry.  In case it wasn't sweet enough it was also sprinkled with icing sugar.  I could feel cavities opening up in my teeth.  Fortunately, the water is working tonight so I can clean them before bed tonight.