Blogs from Emilia-Romagna, Italy, Europe - page 13

We left our camping site early and hit the road as we headed off to the tiny town of Coriano the birthplace of the MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli who was killed at the Grand Prix of Malaysia in 2011. We had followed Marco for some years and it looked as if he was going to be the hope for the future as the Doctor Valentino Rossi was coming to the end of his MotoGP career. The accident had left a hole in GP and we had always promised that we would go if we had chance and were in his part of the world to pay homage to him at his place of burial. Corriano is a small town and we drove around with only one idea of finding the church and the cemetery. The church ... read more

Suzy was on the road again and this time heading for the second time to Camping Hotel Citta di Bologna. Readers of the blog will realise that this time last year we had tried this campsite with a view to catching the bus into Bologna. We failed mainly because the campsite was noisy, we got little sleep and didn’t fancy another night so we moved on. Well we arrived again and it felt like deja vu. The same camp site the same guy was in reception. He said we could park in any plot we liked as the site was empty. Good start we thought. Last year there had been a lot of rain and the plots were waterlogged. This year they were dry and we had the pick of most of them. There were a ... read more

Greg: We entered Bologna not knowing a whole lot about its history, other than it was the home of Spag' Bol' and it had claimed the oldest university in the world. We also didn't have accommodation sorted upon entering the city, but thankfully after a walk round the Bologna train station we located some free wireless and had an email come through confirming we had a bed for the night via AirBnB. We marched down the streets and checked in with our hosts, got a dinner recommendation and went out to explore for the night. We learnt that Bologna is a huge student town, and upon taking up the dinner recommendation for my birthday night we had one of the best meals to date (as of 6 June anyway) while remaining super cheap - off to ... read more

(wrote this yesterday, but just got the Internet working!) Buenjourno! What a week it's been. Last I wrote I was in Florence taking an easy day as I was not quiet feeling 100%. I can happily report I got over whatever that was quickly and so enough of that! The day after the last blog post I hopped on a train heading to Rome to go and see Papa Francesco for Easter weekend. Upon arriving in Rome, I met up with some fellow travelers from the previous hostel that just so happened to be staying at the same hostel in Rome. And clarify what I mean by "hostel" I mean campground outside of Rome. This is the result of being cheap and booking late for Easter weekend. (more on this later) First day in Rome was ... read more

Dear Max and Dominic, Have you seen pictures of Jesus? And have you ever wondered how anyone knows what he looked like? Well, back in the 5th and 6th centuries people in the city of Ravenna made mosaic pictures of him - they were a lot closer to the time he actually lived than we are but as you can see, even they couldn't quite decide what he looked like! To start off with they didn't think he had a beard, then later they did, then they thought he might be quite muscular, then a bit heavier, then with a rainbow and dolphins for some reason, then someone gave up and made a picture of him as if he was a sheep (because his death was a bit like the sacrifice of a lamb). I must ... read more