Bologna

How I wish Rick Steves had a Bologna section in his guidebook.

Rob, Posh, and I took an 8:30am train to Bologna and arrived shortly after 10:00am. We had about ten hours of sightseeing since the first cheaper evening train would leave around 8:30pm. As you can imagine, it was a very long day, and when you don't have much of an idea what the city has to offer it can also be very daunting.

This is all I knew about Bologna before today:

• Bolognese sauce - tomato sauce with ground meat
• It is the site of the world's oldest university

Piazza Maggiore

What I learned from our wanderings:

• There are lots of churches and medieval towers
• It is ranked as one of Italy's cities with a high quality of life
• It houses the longest arcade (covered passageway) in the world with 666 arches
• There are arcades everywhere (did it used to rain a lot there or something?)
• There's a lot of graffiti (good for me since I love photographing it!)
• I love Florence much much more

Inside the Basilica di San Domenico

A part of the San Luca Arcade - we gave up walking the whole thing since it seemed to be never-ending

My aim for the day was to eat a good Bolognese meal. Instead, I got a mediocre Italian meal of pasta alla carbonara and a random chicken with zucchini and potato dish. I will never order a fixed menu again!

Graffiti on the Department of Humanities Library wall

University ads

We spent most of our day walking around with the tourist information office's free map in my hands. I led us on a partial tour of churches, towers, and palazzi before we gave up and just sat down in a cafe for tea and hot chocolate. After that we walked to the Sala Borsa (old stock exchange), now a library, to sit for another hour.

Friends, always take a guidebook (or even better, a local guide) with you when you travel to a new city. Trust me, it will make the trip much more worthwhile!

Today's word of the day is aspettare, "to wait".