Ragusa

So I set the alarm for 4.30 am and the local taxi arrived for me at 5.15.  When I had phoned the day before, Franky, the taxi driver told me that he was also going to Catania for the feast of St Agatha but on a later flight.  Malta is very much a part of the cult of this saint that I first became interested in when we were traveling down from Rome to Catania in September last year.

The tour group that I was to join at the airport was lead by Paul Cassar from Gozo.  We were based in Catania for five days with bus trips organised for four half days.  This meant that we had plenty of time to explore Catania at our own pace as well as getting to see a few of the towns around Mt Etna.  

Etna is covered in snow at this time of year and forms a stunning backdrop as we drove along the highways of Catania.  When we were here in September, the countryside was very dry and brown but now it is lush and green and almost like the Tuscan landscape.  

The flight over from Malta takes less than an hour and the plan was to board the coach at the airport and visit Ragusa before checking into our hotel in the afternoon.  I was beginning to have doubts as we drove through crowded Catania streets and stopped for coffee and toilet at a strange Catania coffee shop.  When we stopped again at a freeway service station at the request of one of the members of the group I started to wonder what I had let myself in for.

In Ragusa, we drove backwards and forwards through heavy traffic over several bridges that traverse a deep gorge running through the centre of the city.  The driver kept stopping to ask for directions but eventually we were dropped off at the central cathedral square.  We had two and a half hours before we had to be back in the square ready for bus pick-up.  The cathedral is massive and I wandered across the square for a quick look inside as a way of getting myself going.

The amazing arches, domes, ceilings, paintings, gilding, statues, candles, relics have all blurred into a generic image for me now and I didn't spend long inside.  When I came out, I wandered over to one of the bridges over the gorge and walked across to the other side.  I then found back streets that allowed me to wander along the edge of the gorge so I started to recover my pleasure in new places.  

The gorge is stunning as is the valley that I discovered on the edge of town.  But what I will remember most about Ragusa are the padlocks!  I discovered a walking bridge across the gorge, and as I was crossing, looking into the gorge through the iron railings I started to notice padlocks and chains locked onto the bars.  For a while, I couldn't work out what they could be for - maybe the people of Ragusa use them to chain up their bikes here.  I noticed there were names on some of them and I thought that particular people must have the key to each padlock and at a certain time they come and attach something to the railings.  Finally I started to notice that most locks had two names on them, sometimes with words like unity or amor.  My hypothesis now is that two people from Ragusa declare their commitment to each other by putting a padlock on the bridge.  The photo that heads this post is of a small group of these padlocks but there were hundreds of them across the bridge, and since that first sighting, I have noticed padlocks in Acireale as well.

When I got back to the large piazza at the cathedral I climbed the steps onto the massive verandah in front of the church and settled on the parapet to take photos of the square.  There was graffiti along the parapet and there were two padlocks again.  Members of the tour group began drifting in and settling on the benches in the piazza.  Eventually the bus arrived late and we all got back on board to head to the hotel.

Our package included an evening meal and we were checked in with plenty of time to get ready for dinner.  I found myself on a table for six and was to share dinner with the same people for the four evenings.  There was an older couple from Valletta who now live in Hamrun and had been coming to Catania for eleven years  and a very helpful couple from Ghargur who were traveling with their sister.  Victor later told me that he had made an ex voto commitment to St Agatha that if his prayer was answered he would come to Catania and light a candle for her.  That was why they were on the tour and they achieved their goal on the final day of the feast.

Apart from the pasta, the dinners were institutional and English!  But we shared some good Catanian wine and enjoyed the gossip.  Every so often, Vicky, Victor's wife, translated for me when she realised that they had all slipped into Malti.   They told me about Malta's national feast of St Paul which is on today and I am going to look out for them when I go up to Valletta now for the procession.