Siracusa Transportation

I got to Siracusa on board a ship. Certainly, you can get there by air. And there is another way - while staying in Malta you can make a tour to Sicily by boat.
ON FOOT!

Siracusa and Ragusa are not easy to be reached! They are located on the most Southern tip of Sicily, in Italy.
The first thing to go there is to fly to Catania (several national and international links), the you may find a bus right at the exit of the airoport lounge, on the left-hand side. Otherwise, I would advise to hire a car (in the airport) and drive through great countryside.
Train is unuseful in that area.

from the bus stop near the park, newspaper stand and gelateria you can get buses to lido arenelle and fountain blanche.

The later is better, in fact the former is highly unpleasant on the main beach (think minehead 1950) but if you walk over the headland theres lovely water and rocks fro swimming.

buses are frequent and cost 80 cents.

Getting to Siracusa is easy. Train from Catania takes around a couple of hours and are fairly frequent. The evening trains can be a bit full both of daytrippers and since they go on to mainland Italy, but you won't have a problem getting here. There are also trains from Ragusa further west.

I took the Siracusa bus from Palermo. It was an express and took 3 hrs approx and was not the adventurous trip I have had on some other transport. I am a single female over 60 and the locals were very helpful. It is difficult to find the correct transport on the web. The bus terminal is at the side of the train terminal. Go through the train terminal - WC's are on your left, go ahead, a little to the left past the post office and there is the ticket booth. Buses are a little further on. Only 3 buses per day but well worth it at 12euros.

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There is a large covered parking area on Ortygia. It is on the side of the small harbor, the exit of the town.

The thing is big, but the P-signs pointing to it are very small. In fact, i only noticed them when i walked the streets, having parked the car. The other thing is that the entrance can only be reached either through driving through the whole town (?) and taking the most left of the gates on the passage to a fort or to use a passage way under the road the size of a mouse hole.

When you take the left gate, you're in the middle of the road and are prevented to enter the garage, unless you make a U-turn and drive a short distance in the wrong direction. I have seen this done in the night.

The mouse hole leads to an EXIT of the parking area so you have to make a direct turn into the afore mentioned street to the left. The only way to see if there is traffic coming is by sticking the nose of the car out of the tunnel, stop and look to the right. Luckily Italian drives also watch carefully. You drive along the parking area and make a sharp turn to the right to enter the garage. On the way out, the turn to the right was too sharp for my large car, so i had to make a tour through the garage to make a turn to the left and drive in a straight line.

At the end of the road is a crossing for pedestrians - if you want to leave and must return by foot - with traffic lights and they were NEVER green for the pedestrian. After some time, you just take to the street. See the pictures.

On the plus side: parking is 1 (one) euro for a night. Let me repeat this: 1 (one) euro for a night. (In Amsterdam you pay 4 euro's for 50 minutes! That is over 100 times as much.).

In the (old) town there are parking area's marked yellow for inhabitants. The areas marked in blue are pay zone, where you have to pay (1 euro per hour!). And unmarked areas were you do not have to pay. Every area, provide it is not forbidden, large enough to park a car can and shall be used to park a car.

Several buses depart from Ortigia (in front of the Post Office) which claim to go to the Archeogical Park. Be careful to take a map, and understand where you are. The one we took got very close to the park after about 10 minutes, but we didn't know to get off, and it was not marked. If you go next to the Cathedral of St. Mary (tall teardrop shape) GET OFF, and walk two blocks west to the park. The Archeolgy Museum and Catacombs are also close by. Otherwise you stay on the bus and get a 30 minute tour of the Soviet-style apartment blocks before getting back around to the Park entrance.