[ July 2017 ] The town of Marina di Ragusa in the south of Sicily in Italy is a holiday resort whose population increase nearly 20 times in the summer.
We stayed in this town for our summer holiday this year.
Because it is a holiday resort, we could not find any traditional long standing restaurants, but only the ones with showy interiors with seafood menus which were almost exactly the same everywhere, so I was not impressed.
Only once did I find sea urchin pasta, my favourite, on the menu, but the pasta was too thick and heavy for my liking.
It took long time to digest it.
And the worst one was the mixed fried seafood.
When I ate it, it was not bad, but afterwards during the night, I had a very bad experience.
On the next day, I stayed in bed almost all day, postponing the tour we planned for the day.
On the evening of that day, finally I was getting better, so we went to Ragusa again to see the town at night.
Many people were saying that the night view of Ragusa was wonderful.
And it was.
When it was getting dark, slowly the lights were going on one by one in the old town, Ragusa Ibra, which was amazing.
The atmosphere was much more special than daytime and I felt something deep which was even scary.
We had our dinner in the town, but before that we took a tourist train which they call Trenino (small train).
We learned during this tour that there are two cathedrals in Ragusa, one is called Cattedrale in the newer part of the town, Ragusa Superiore and the other is Duomo in Ragusa Ibra.
Actually I had noticed that when we were there the day before, but did not think much of it.
Both Cattedrale and Duomo are usually translated as cathedral.
Each of these cathedrals has their own saint and they always compete each other.
Especially the festivals are the main events to show how they are better than the other.
After the earthquake of 1693, they were originally planning to build just one cathedral, but they kept discussing and could not agree and ended up to build two.
Then I noticed that in the small booklet called “The Churches in Ragusa” I got there, the Duomo is not mentioned and it is written as ‘monumental church’.
The writer must have been the supporter of Cattedrale.
There must be many good restaurants in Ragusa, but we did not check the internet beforehand, so the foods we ate there were not so special, apart from the dessert.
This was very simple cake of the renowned local Ricotta cheese on the dough of pizza and on top of that the pieces of pistachio were scattered.
This tasted not too sweet and very nice.
On the way back, the taxi driver stopped at the spot where we could see the night view of Ragusa Ibla.
The town was floating in yellow in the pitch black background, which I would not forget.
