Bologna

Buon giorno!




You have probably heard about (or even tasted) foods named after the city of Bologna such as spaghetti bolognese or baloney sausage but did you know that the thing to eat in Bologna is tagliatelle al ragù?

We were so determined to see Bologna, that we had booked our train tickets there even before we left Finland.

The trip was an hour and a half by regional train from Verona. But if you're not as cheap as we are you can get there in 50 minutes on a high speed train.

Before we went our B&B host in Verona told us that Bologna feels like a different country and it certainly did. That's probably because many Italian cities were independent states until recently.
We found that not only the architecture but also the people are a bit different in each city.

As good tourist we headed straight from the station to the old city. Or well, almost straight, we stopped at a café first. Julius was getting cranky because he needed an espresso.

Bologna is famous for it's many arcades. Running through them was fun.

In the centre we saw a cathedral, it turned out to be Cattedrale Metropolitana di San Pietro and decided to have a look inside. We had forgotten that it was a Sunday so we walked into an ongoing mass. It was very pretty and the strong smell of incense almost made me dizzy. For obvious reasons we didn't take any pictures inside.

Close to the cathedral is the famous Neptune Fountain (Fontana del Nettuno). It was out of use and closed off so I didn't get the shower I really wanted, but you could still see it through the fence.

I asked Julius to take a picture of the fountain. This is the part of it he decided to focus on...

Did you know that it's not just Pisa that has a leaning tower, Bologna has two of them: the Asinelli and Garisenda Towers. We decided to climb to the top of the Asinelli tower which is the tallest of the two. Turns out you have to pre-book your tickets or get them from the tourist office. You can't buy them at the entrance. So after a quick detour to the tourist office we went up. My humans were sweating like pigs because getting to the top of the 100 metre tall tower in the Italian summer heat is hard work. But Julius and I were clever enough to climb into their backpack.

At the top of the tower

The view from the tower.

While walking through the city we randomly came across the Mineralogical Museum of the University of Bologna. Check out my review of it on TripAdvisor. Lured in by the free entry sign outside we found that we were the only people there. We got a very informative but not too long guided tour. There were so many pretty, shiny and weirdly shaped rocks! Julius unsuccessfully tried to break into the showcase with the diamonds, the sneaky bugger. So we went back to Verona emptyhanded...

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the Italian Alps.
A domani!