Day #255 - Bologna, Italy

Center Square - Bologna

Chocolate - made to look like rusted tools

Gate to the 'Old City'

Archway streets throughout town

Homemade tortellini soup

Wednesday, November 24th

Solid day in Italy today. We're working the train system and seeing the sites. For the second consecutive day, we made it to our train with about 5 minutes to spare early in the morning. Nothing like getting your heart pumping to jumpstart the day.

We left Venice around 8am and headed to Bologna, Italy. This was an intermediate stop on our way to Florence. We arrived at 10am - giving ourselves 4 hours to walk the city.

Bologna was great. I didn't know much about this city - but was pleasantly surprised. We first walked through one of the gates of the old city - built in the 12th century. We entered the town to find long streets lined with shops and people - down these decorated archways. We came upon a bunch of booths selling chocolate. It was some sort of festival or something. We got to walk along and eat samples at several of the different shops - very nice.

One of the draws to Bologna for us today was to try out some of the local cuisine. Bologna is the birthplace of mortadella sausage (the distant granddaddy of American bologna) and meat-stuffed tortellini pasta. We had an awesome lunch with homemade tortellini soup and shared a side-dish of the mortadella sausage.

A couple other things I read about: Bologna is home to the world's oldest university - the University of Bologna (founded in 1088). Bologna also ranks as one of Italy's top cities in terms of quality of life. It's a lively and cosmopolitan city, with a rich history in cuisine, art, and culture.

Without reading this, my sister and I pointed out the big-city feel. The streets were filled with people at noon on Wednesday in the middle of November. Alot of activity. This is defintely a great spot to spend a few hours (at a minimum) as you work your way into Tuscany.

We left Bologna around 2:15pm and took a 2-train combination to Florence - arriving at 4pm. We made our way to our hotel - located in a great spot on the western side of town. It was dark by now. We had a great dinner and spent the evening planning a strategy for the next couple days.

Tomorrow we get to experience Florence, Italy.