Day 122 Days of Past Glory!

Saturday 21/07/2018 (Day 36 SZ) Saganuma Corso Italia, 385, Ragusa, 97100, Italy -

Awoke today thinking of Allana my niece and her fiancée Jack their engagement party is tonight and most of the family will be at it! Feeling a bit sad I can’t be there to be with them all to celebrate it!

We stayed in most of the AM getting pics etc up to date, then headed to Maccas for a much needed cuppa... from here w headed out of town to some Catacombs I hD read about on TripAdvisor.. a guy hD posted the exact where about sand how to access the, which was fantastic.... we followed his instructions and yep stop on...

What an interesting site this one was... you could actually see where the graves had been chilled out if the rocks... whatever was there is long gone now... we spent about 20 mins there...... to access it you had to walk down a fairly long trail beside rocked fences... over a ridge line and they were tucked in under the rock wall... big gates at the entrance but thankfully not locked....the heat today is pretty intense, so by the time we made it back to the car we were very hot and sweaty...

Onto our next point of interest Donnafugata Castle... and was this place worth a visit... the building itself in is pretty good condition... a huge building with extensive grounds that in their heyday would have been just magnificent, but not so now..
Lack of water and being maintained has seen it fall into a bit of disrepair... the bones of everything are still there, just no TLC given to keep the dream alive...

Before we entered the Castle you had to walk up a central walkway that forex between a number of Restaurants and a cattle yard... yep you read right a cattle yard, with what appears to be a milking shed along with some poor drought stricken looking cattle... there isn’t any green feed in sight anywhere....

We head up to the Castle finding a lovely green area near by with a water fountain, then turn to go into the Castle only to discover it was closing down for the afternoon we think...

On our way to the castle John spotted a sign that tells us about another lot of Catacombs, as we think we can’t see the castle we head to the Catacombs..

This was up a very, very dusty, rocky road... obviously the cattle walk up and down here because dung is all the way up... once we finally reach the opening to the Catacomb we realise it isn’t half as good as the last one... not as big, not as unreal how it is dug into sheer rock... but I guess it was good to compare them both...

Back we trod to one of the Restaurants for a bit to eat.. we ordered a fresh salad and some sort of cheese and ham pastry thing! It was ok, but nothing to rave about….. while sitting there we were watching people walking up to the castle and not retuning,so we figured maybe you can go into it...and yep we could... when we reread the sign it said it was closed at 12-2.30 pm so we gathered all the people who were in it when we arrived at nearly 2 pm must have been left overs from the am opening times!

So off we went, it was interesting in that it had original curtains, furniture, clothing of the day....all the painted walls and wallpaper were original as well.... looking at how th wall paper was made was so interesting..... it was done on a jute hessian type finished and glued to the walls... we went through 28 of the 200 rooms in the palace..that’s all that is opened to the public... each room had a spiel about the people who had used them over the Castle years of life, the one that sticks in my mind was about a princess from France who would come every summer to holiday here..l looking around you would wonder why, summer is just so hot and dry and you’re no where near the water at the castle ...

A look around the gardens this are so, so, dry and let go... it has a huge maze a
made from stone, it had quite a height as well... so John in his wisdom decided we would go in, we did hit a few dead ends, but somehow managed to get in and get out... I think we felt like a kid 🧒 getting out ok.... made us behave like kids too..l a bit of fun in our day!

With have conquered the maze, then we headed up the wide staircase to look from the top of the balcony, this gave us views over the area, which didn’t look any greener from up here as to down there! The poor cleaning lady had been hard at it on the huge wide staircase sweeping away all the dirt and leaves, but to Honest it looked like a losing battle for her with the wind blowing stuff back to where she was cleaning it!

This was a highlight for John who enjoyed the whole history and how well preserved it really has been! Haven’t been and seen we headed off to have a look at Ragusa Marina and the coastline.

Well that didn’t pan out as planned... the streets had no parking and which ever one we took it ended up a dead end....trying to turn around in a very narrow jammed pack with cars dead end Street is fun.... not! John managed to get it done but took sin effort... so off we headed to try to get along the coast road... but that didn’t exist at all... it was houses and dead end streets right to the beach front... must have been heaps there as there were cars everywhere in tightist of spots..
After 30 mins of trying to manoeuvre our way around we gave up and headed home.....

Off we heard back home 🏡.... where I cooked up one meal that I had bought all the ingredients for, however as it was going to take forever, I had to quickly defrost my pork we had bought the other day, and then prepared a kebab type meal without sticks... I actually tasted amazing much to my surprise... the other meal I par cooked ready to use the next night...I could have had the street people over for dinner as I had made such a massive dish, we will be eating it fi days.. I tell John I am being economical...l had layer zucchini, eggplant, capsicum, ricotta mixed with philly cream cheese and feta... then cooked mince and onion with a tomatoes basil sauces then layered them in the big dish.... tasted wonderful lots of flavour something we are so missing... will hav to see how it is once rebooked tomorrow night!Leggi altro