Bologna

---

So it appears that I have been absent for a while. Let me fill you in a little on what I’ve been up to. Let’s start with the most fun part. Last week I went to Italy to visit my darling parental units. Stupidly I chose to fly out of Paris on the day of the grève. Grèves (commonly known as strikes) occur often in France, but this one was supposedly particularly bad as all the transportation unions in the country were staging a strike on the same day. This basically means that in Paris, none of the buses or the metros or the RER (suburban trains) were running, however, business is as usual. The whole of Paris just walks to work, or borrows their kid’s scooter, or puts on a jogging suit and gets up early. In Paris there is this system called the Vélib’ where you can rent a public bike in Paris for very cheap and return it to any of the stations around Paris. People were literally getting their bikes a day or two early and chaining them to trees so that they would have a bike to get to work in the morning… it was crazy! So anyway, back to my Italy story. Despite the strike, I ended up walking several miles to a large train station and then getting an AirFrance bus to the airport. However, after stupidly listening to my father’s advice, I arrived 6 hours early and had to sit around Charles de Gaulle airport all day long.

Several hours later I made it to Bologna after making a few friends on the plane ride over. I met a guy who is apparently an extremely famous architectural historian and his girlfriend… I can’t believe how many languages they can speak between them, it was crazy!

Bologna is beautiful. My second cousin, Louise (who I would display a picture of, but I think she would kill me) also joined my parents and I for the weekend which was really fun ?

So we arrived in Bologna and met my father, who was “casually” leaning on the front desk of the hotel drinking whatever he was drinking and trying to hurry us out the door as soon as possible (no help with the bags up the stairs, I might add!). We got taken on a brisk walk around the square with a large fountain with water spouting from a certainly womanly part of the female figures in the statue and to what is apparently my father “local”. It was rather a cool little bar with a nice barman named Claudio (note to father: you should never let it be known that you know the bar man’s name—I learned this from Phillipe, my friendly bartender at Steeple in St. Michel!). While sipping our fancy little cocktails (and virgin fruit smoothie for my mother), we learned that the Italians have huge tables full of delicious free samples that accompany your drinks. Now, I assume that almost anyone who reads this knows that I have a slight obsession with free samples. In fact, when I go home to Virginia, even for just a weekend, there is a mandatory trip to CostCo involved, and I do have to admit then whenever I run to Howard at Northwestern, there does happen to be a nice little cake shop on the way that gives out free treats! So we gorged ourselves on mini rolls stuffed with mozzarella and tomatoes and fish pâté filled pastry boats, chatted, then got rushed off again (notice the pattern) by my father to a little restaurant for dinner. It was quite quaint and we fresh and smelly off the plane, we met my dad’s friend who teachers at the university in Bologna. We had a nice meal, where I think I had a salad with mustard dressing followed by pumpkin stuffed torteloni, and then sweet chestnuts stuffed with sweet chestnut gelato. Wonderful. We then said goodbye to my parents’s friend and headed to the local gelato joint for a second dessert! Again, Amazing. I have no clue what I ate; I think one had nutella in it, another was white chocolate, and the third was some sort of fruity mixture. It was heaven.

The next morning we went on a long walk around and then left my father to go to the train station to go and teach. Louise and I had a guided tour of Bologna by my mother, but were only taken into about 3 of the 1000 churches in the tiny town. They are so old and it was interesting to see one that had sections that were from different ages. Oh, and I got a new coat (see the gray one in pictures). In the evening we met up with my father at the same bar and then went to another restaurant. I believe I again had torteloni (this time mushroom) and then shared a pizza with my mother.

Yes, my jeans did not fit at the end of this vacation, I admit it!

The next day we took a little trip on the train to Florence. Somehow we ended up getting off the train in Florence and then having to take another train to Florence. I was so confused. But don’t worry daddy, even if I think you’re crazy, I’ll stand up for you when you screw up! Florence was interesting, and not at all what I had expected. It was tiny and completely flooded with tourists. Way more so that even the Eiffel Tower area of Paris is! We didn’t even go in any museum or historical building because the lines were circling each building, it was crazy. We wandered past several stores that you can see in any city in the world, looked at the many touristy carts selling vulgar items, then finally made it to a restaurant. We sat and took our timing eating (again, a pizza pour moi) then basically headed straight back to the train station. We couldn’t have been there for more than 3.5 hours, and that includes lunch! We did cross the river and find a nice little area to look around with some more expensive shops to stare in the windows of, but other than that, Florence was not what I was expecting. It even made me question whether I want to go to any of the other touristy cities in Italy, like Venice. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was very glad that we went to see Florence and would have been sad to not see it, but I think we all agreed that Bologna was much nicer. When we got back to lovely little Bologna, we got another gelato and headed to the cocktail bar and dinner (take a guess at what I ordered!).

p.s. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE BROTHER!

On Sunday we awoke and my father felt the need to go to church. Well, to climb 666 steps to a church. We took a long walk to the highest point in Bologna to see some amazing views and an old church. On our way back down, we found was was my favourite restaurant in Bologna. We were all hungry after walking for hours, so we stopped at this little pizzeria type place and I had another mushroom pizza, accompanied by fries (dipped in olive oil, Italian style), then yes, we went back into the town to have yet another gelato. The food in that country is amazing and I could keep eating it for hours. I have no clue how everything can be so delicious, but it was! For some reason after our large lunch and gelato, we then decided to go and visit Claudio again, then go to another restaurant. Besides my normal pasta, I also had a bowl of spinach with garlic and chili. Interesting combination.

Monday we were awoken by a text message from Louise saying that her flight had been cancelled, and she had to stay in Bologna until the evening (oh dear, how terrible!), so after my father went to teach, Louise, mum and I wandered around Bologna again and had a nice little afternoon sitting in a café and eating sandwiches and drinking coffee and relaxing. And no, I didn’t have gelato.

Overall, I loved my trip to Bologna. It was great to see Louise and my darling parents, and it was a lot of fun to visit Italy. I’d love to go back, and I think I’d want to stay in a smaller town, and then maybe take a day trip to a bigger town, instead of spending the entire trip in somewhere like Florence. There are just too many tourists in the big towns, and I think you can’t really appreciate the culture—and the lack of hips that Italians have!—unless you’re in a quieter city, even if it’s the home of the oldest university in the world.

Enjoy the pictures!

---