Sitting outside a cafe having breakfast this morning it was almost too hot in the sun (and I was wearing a t-shirt). This is not something we do very often, but we’d run out of cereal. A popular Sicilian breakfast is brioche and granita (similar to Sorbet, I think, but crunchier) but cappuccino and croissant (which very confusingly is ‘cornetto’ in Italian) did nicely for me.
We went off to Noto today, on a single-carriage narrow-gauge train. Noto is one of three towns in the south-east of Sicily which were destroyed by an earthquake in 1693. They were re-built in the eighteenth century in a style known ‘Sicilian Baroque’ out of a soft honey-yellow limestone which could easily be carved.
When we arrived in Noto we were taken aback by the lack of crowds and the number of notices in restaurants and shops saying they were, ‘Chiusi per ferie’ (Closed for the holidays). The lack of activity rather made us feel we were walking around a film set. However, we wandered into some churches, through the streets and eventually into a Palazzo, part of which was opened to the public in 2004 when the last owner passed away.
Walking around, you could see how grand the Palazzo had once been, but now it looked rather ‘lived in’. The walls, painted to look like marble, were chipped, which rather gave the game away. The tiled floors had traces of adhesive where carpets must have been laid on top at some stage. I was longing for a heritage organisation, like the National Trust, to take it over and bring it back to its former glory, but sadly I don’t think there is the money in Italy, let alone in Sicily, to do that.
Ice-cream in Noto has the reputation for being the best in the world, but sadly both establishments particularly recommended were closed, so that is a claim we will just have to test on a subsequent visit to Sicily. For us, the best ice-cream in Italy remains at a gelateria in Rome we were staying near last year.
A word about the train – we nearly didn’t get to Noto today. The departure board at Siracusa wasn’t working, so Mark asked the man in the ticket office which platform the train for Noto left from. In reply he showed two fingers, not to make a rude gesture, but to denote platform two. We trotted over to platform two.
As the time come for our train to leave, we were still waiting at an empty platform. Another station employee (not the morose gentleman selling tickets) spotted us and asked where we were going. We told him, and he indicated that we were on the wrong platform and we would have to return from where we had come. We returned via the underpass. When we emerged, he indicated a platform which we had not spotted before, also called ‘two’, but with the additional word ‘ovest’ (west) complete with a waiting train.
When we came back to Noto station, we were expecting to buy our return tickets from the machine in the usual way, but the waiting areas and ticket office were all closed (This was before 4pm when it seems that most Sicilians like to be horizontal). We thought there was nothing for it but to buy our tickets on the train.
As we explained to the guard on the train that we had been unable to buy our tickets because the station was closed, he seemed rather unhappy, but not with us. Perhaps the station should have been open. The guard (who also checks tickets) did not issue us with tickets, as we had been expecting, so we got a free ride home. We have found that a lot of time in Italy if a problem is perceived as being too difficult to deal with, nothing is done about it.
Finally, thank you so much for all your comments on the blog. Please do keep them coming as, for me, they are what keeps the blog alive.
Tortoise Travel 