This was our second time in Ortigia and apart from the Archimedes Museum that I was reluctant to suggest a visit to we had done almost everything that we could do so today we planned a trip away and to the nearby town of Noto. I concede that a town called Noto might sound a bit off putting but we went ahead nevertheless.
At the bus station I enquired about travel but the bearded girl in the pay kiosk with a face permanently programmed to being rude had clearly never been to charm school or been on a customer care course and she waved her arms, grunted and was hopelessly unhelpful so we abandoned the bus idea and walked a little further to the train station.
The guide books say that this is the second most important train station in Sicily and if that is the case I wouldn't want to see the third or the fourth. The self serve ticket machine was broken so we approached the ticket office where a man who was challenging the girl in the bus ticket office for most obnoxious and unhelpful person in all of Sicily sold us our tickets and with a dismissive wave of his arm directed us to platform two.
We waited on platform two with several other people and no train arrived. At about thirty seconds before departure time an official on the opposite side of the tracks started to gesticulate wildly and shouting that we were on the wrong platform. It turned out that there were two platform twos which was too confusing to the two of us and we were waiting on the wrong one so along with everyone else we had to make a mad dash from the intercity platform two to the local line platform two.
What sort of railway station has two platform twos? We thought that we were travelling on a modern high speed train but ended up on this piece of graffitied junk...
Unexpectedly it turned out to be rather efficient and comfortable and took about forty minutes to arrive in Noto. Kim slept most of the way, Kim always sleeps on trains. I sat next to the window and enjoyed the views.
Arrival in Noto was not very promising, the station was a mile or so out of the town centre and the ticket office was closed and the waiting room locked, a single taxi driver was touting for business. It was rather like that part in the movie Butch Cassidey and the Sundance Kid when they turn up in Bolivia and were desperately disappointed.
We rejected the taxi offer and walked the mile or so into the town.
A Baroque masterpiece, a town rebuilt out of a natural disaster and far enough away from the coast not to suffer environmental consequences as in Ortigia.
We groped our way to the town centre, bickering between ourselves a about the route to be taken as we always do and then liked what we found. A grand archway at the entrance to the town and beyond that a Baroque museum, a living Baroque museum.
I liked it immediately it reminded me immediately of Lecce in Puglia.
The town is like a piece of theatre, an architectural delight, I was in awe as we walked the main street for its entire length marvelling its churches, mansions and palaces, a town that had been rebuild from disaster and has a real feeling of being appreciated and looked after. No peeling facades here, no crumbling balconies, no concrete cancer but a living museum, sparkling white in the sunshine, glowing spectacularly under the brilliant blue sky.
We ambled along, visited a convent with a climb and an elevated view of the town and then the Cathedral (free admission, I always approve of that) then the town hall (admission charge, waste of money) and then stopped off for a midday drink.
I liked this place, it was worth the travel problems to get here but by early afternoon everywhere was closing down. I tried to find a statue of Garibaldi, everywhere in Italy has a statue of Garibaldi but here I couldn't find one but by compensation there was a movie poster next to a tourist tat shop.
We had planned to stay longer into the afternoon but by two o'clock the town was deep in siesta mode, shops, museums, restaurants were all closed so we dawdled back to the bus station and considered our options. The train station was a thirty minute walk away, the bus timetable said that there was a bus in five minutes. We agreed on the bus option and we waited and waited and then waited some more.
An express bus pulled in but it was going directly to Catania bypassing Syracuse, so we waited and we waited and then we waited some more.
I was all for giving up and walking to the train station and taking our chances on the tracks but then almost out of nowhere forty minutes late a bus arrived, pulled up and confirmed that it was going to Syracuse so we climbed aboard for the fifty minute journey home. Kim fell asleep.
We couldn't go to our favourite bistro today, it was their day off so we found a suitable alternative and we wondered why we hadn't been there before.
It was our final evening in Ortigia, we had a final glass of wine on the balcony and in the morning we got up early and took the bus to the airport.
Maybe we will return one day but I can't be sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment