Locanda Borgonuovo Ferrara

... easy and not force myself to run up and down mountains! It's okay to take a day off I beleive. In acknowledgement of my cold, I decided I should have a proper meal at a proper table, and just enjoy some good food!
I ordered what is considered a pasta that is chacter to Ferrara. and It was breaktakingly sumptous! A type of ravioli with Pumpkin inside drizzled all over with a butter and sage sauce. I ate these ...

... turbo-prop model. Even our small hand carry luggage won’t fit under the seat or overhead bin on these small planes, so we gave them to baggage handlers at the plane and they stowed them for us.

We arrived at the Munich airport at 2:00 pm and called the King Hotel for instructions on transportation options to the hotel. We found the “S” train, which is basically very similar to our BART system, was the way to go. For 18 ...

... power of the ruthless Este dynasty who built the fortress to protect themselves from their own citizens.

Ferrara's Cathedral, built in 1135, is a gem of Romanic and Gothic architecture featuring a 3 tier facade with boney arches.

The Church of Sant'Antonio in Polesine contains beautiful frescoes from the 13th and 14th centuries.

The Palazzo del Diamanty (palace of Diamonds) was close to the castle and we leaned on it and check it off our list.

Short train ride from Florence after a hair raising trip trying to return the rental car in confusing, congested and traffic restrictied Florence (don't rent a car downtown go to the airport). Bologna is an university town (even Johns Hopkin has a campus). Very historical town with a great plaza area like most towns and a great antique market.

... the language. Gherardo was a willing wealth of knowledge, and taught me that if a man in Italy is wearing a bespoke suit, he unbuttons the last button on the cuff of his suit, to signify this. I started looking for it and saw it all over the place.

After dinner we rushed to catch our train back to the hotel, but we missed it. It was close to midnight, and no more trains. After haggling with ...

... never tried it..) and a jaccuzi tub in the bathroom AND there were two sinks - one was really low to the ground so we didnt use it :). We put our stuff away and went down to the desk to find out where was good to eat. I sheepishly asked what the deal was with our room and the lady just smiled and said there is no suppliment, they were overbooked. This place was probably 200 Euro a night and we were paying less than 40 ...

... Biketour and Valle degli Elfi, a huge ecovillage near Pistoia, which we have visited before last spring (but for sure we didn't see it all!).

Yesterday we reached Bologna and were lucky again to be able to stay in an amazing squatted social center, called XM24, "Ex-Mercato". http://www.ecn.org/xm24/ It exists for 8 years and was a market place before. Now they organize here weekly an organic market together with ...

... assume that we would be in big trouble if we had to describe where we parked. So we made a note of the street names (and building landmarks) and headed off. Bologna is one of the biggest cities that we have visited so far approx. 475,000 people, it also seems to be the dirtiest and there is a lot of graffiti on the buildings. We find a beautiful church that was built in 1392 out of marble and then head to the Piazza Maggiore where there is another church ...

... It turned out the hotel wasn’t too far away, and on the way there we learnt that the man was Sicilian, and he couldn’t understand why we were in Bologna. It was a bit too hard to sign language 'we got a cheap flight here, it’s only for 1 night and then we are off to the Cinque Terre’. We did manage to get the Cinque Terre bit across – he said it’s ‘OK’ but we should really be going to Sicily because that is much ...

... from the one wall where people were praying, was covered in photos and messages to the Saint, though I saw none in English. Further on was a room which appeared to be full of scaffolding, but through all the ladders and everything were a lot of gold objects arrayed in alcoves in the far wall. Upon closer inspection they appeared to be relics of St Antony and his ...