Aperitivo, Bologna. July 2016
[from FB post: July 21, 2016]
Some things I have learned...
The exterior of the buildings in Venice all used to be painted with frescoes in the "Golden Age" of Venice. So if you think Venice looks good now, imagine how it looked with all the big buildings being covered in art!
Ravenna was the capital of Byzantine Italy so there are lots of mosaics there. The place is kind of a Greek/Italian hybrid. Very interesting.
Tortellini is from Emilia Romagna (this region). I just had some... Yum, delicious, to die for. It is nothing... I mean NOTHING like anything I ever ate before that called itself "tortellini". Italy inspires me never to eat Italian food in the USA cuz there are too many people who think they know, but don't.
Italian service is old school and nasty. Italians overall are lovely and helpful, don't get me wrong. But in the food service situation, if you really don't know what you are doing, you get a lot of impatience and are treated as an idiot. Yes, the food is delicious. But also YES, I am the one paying for it and I am NOT Italian. (Sigh)
The journey continues....
[from FB post: July 22, 2016]
More notes from Emilia Romagna.
The area of "Tuscany" actually geographically extends into Emilia Romagna... Which means the same geographic formations of lovely rolling hills. I visited a hill town today. Wow. I get why people fall in love with Tuscany.
I visited Faenza which in English gives us the word "faence" which is a fancy word for ceramics. The whole city is a big ceramic workshop. Wow...
Later I walked through the University of Bologna (one of the oldest in Europe). Again... Wow. I can't even imagine going to university in Bologna.
My visit to Italy draws to a close. It really was a great time....
The trip to Bologna and Emilio Romagna was my first real "day-trips from one base city" trip. Before that time I was still stuck in the mode of having to spend a few days in each location and relentlessly moving on. As I got older, I made the rule of spending at least two nights anywhere if possible so I would have one full, non-travel day in a city. Even that became exhausting in spite of the excitement of travel and new destinations. Perhaps because of age I decided that I would stay in Bologna for a full week and explore the region. I loved the experience so much it became the preferred mode of travel in my later life.
The province of Emilio Romagna is not well-known to tourists and people outside of Italy, although its individual cities are familiar, most notably Bologna. The best part of being in Bologna was that it was itself an amazingly underrated city, so it had all the best parts of Italy without being overrun by tourists (who were overwhelmingly Chinese that summer). I woke up each morning to have my cappuccino and pastry near the hotel (ordered exactly correctly lest I get a withering stare from the barista) and then walked across the street to the home of my sometimes friend, sometimes not - Trenitalia. At least all the train rides were short. I spent each morning in a new city, took my lunch there, and wandered a little more. I was back to Bologna by late afternoon to refresh myself and then walk a little more in that city until aperitivo time. It was a very relaxing way to travel, see new things, and yet not worry about bags and finding hotels and other less glamorous aspects of travel.
The one exception to my rather relaxed week in Bologna was my mad dash visit to Venice for one day (three hours each way on a local train - ugh). Dear friends C&C contacted me out of the blue and we found we were all in Italy at the same time. I could not turn down a chance to spend time with them and their rambunctious boys as they had always been stalwart, supportive friends in some of the darkest moments of my life. In the end, I found myself arriving at Venice station and trying to walk across that city to their hotel near St Marks. I hoped not to get lost on the way to their hotel as my memories of strolling in Venice and getting lost in its maze of streets and canals were not pleasant. We had an amazing day together and I was so happy I made the effort.
My week in Bologna and panic trip to Venice during that time remains one of my best holidays in Europe ever. It set a new standard for travel for me that I wish I had discovered many years before.
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