Bologna

Not to be confused with the processed meat, Bologna was our next stop after Venice. We needed to kill a few days before getting to Rome as we are meeting up with Steven's friends at the end of our stay in Italy...it will be nice to see familiar faces once again!

Bologna is known for having some amazing food so we were curious to see if the city would live up to the hype.

We took a quick train ride from Venice and schlepped our luggage way too far to our bed & breakfast. What should have only taken about 15-20 minutes from the train station ended up taking about an hour because we kept having to take breaks - our big backpacks only weighed about 15 kilos at the start of our trip. Last count, they were about 20 kilos (approx. 44 lbs). That's just the way it goes.

Our B&B was...interesting. The nicest lady, Gabriella, greeted Stephanie with two kisses on the cheek, converted her apartment into a B&B. Reminded us of a grandmother's house with antique furniture, really bad floral prints, and that musky smell. But she was so nice we can't really say anything too badly about the place. And, it was just us, the other two rooms were empty.

View of the dining area - see what we mean?

She made us some espresso, brought us a huge plate of little cookies, and gave us a detailed map of the city so we could go explore. Since we had the entire following day in Bologna as well, we decided to just walk around, familiarize ourselves with the city, and plot our plan of attack for the next day. We really only needed 2 hours in the city, not 1.5 days:/ Probably the most interesting part of the afternoon was discovering the market on a random side street selling everything from tee shirts to cheese to salami. We sampled a few things and shared a cannoli, Steven was in heaven since it reminded him of his grandma's famous cannolis.

We had dinner at a little trattoria where the menu was only in Italian - we tried to decipher some of the words but didn't have much luck. Fortunately, the waiter spoke pretty good English so he was able to help us out a little and we had some incredible homemade pasta dishes. We're definitely not starving in Italy.

The next day, we went to the main square and visited the San Petronio Basilica, the fifth largest church in the world. Rumor has it the church was to be larger than St. Peter's in Rome but the Pope wanted nothing to do with that it wasn't completely finished.

As with most buildings in Europe, no photography is allowed inside so this photo is courtesy of wikipedia:

The square:

The city has two main towers, one of which you can actually climb up to see a nice view of the cityscape. There used to be somewhere around 180 towers scattered across the city, but most were removed (for one reason or another) or collapsed in the 13th century.

Climbing all 498 steps, we arrived at this:

We treated ourselves to some gelato at a place called La Sorbetteria - there was a pamphlet on the window, apparently the owner does some seminars in San Francisco and New Jersey at a place called Ice Cream University. Might have to look into this when we get home...

Stephanie forgot her one nice pair of shoes at the B&B in Venice, so we spent the rest of the afternoon perusing shops and trying to find a pair that wouldn't break the bank. She was successful and now has a nice souvenir of Italy.