Interestingly, for me it is the exact opposite, I tried Django/Python and it's more difficult for me to grok. Somehow I just find Rails easier and more straightforward.
I like ruby quite a lot, too.
rails made me very fast.
I think one thing is true -- Ruby gives you lots of different ways to do things. And it can be really terse sometimes, if you want it to be. Some Ruby devs IMO should learn to favor readability over terseness.
Overall though, Ruby is my favorite language and IMO can be very beautiful. I don't think anybody would call Python beautiful. (Lots of great things about it though, nice language and ecosystem... no hate)