Hotel Bentivoglio

... there is a line up at the door. This culture is so different, and takes some getting used to I think.

Wednesday I woke up able to breathe a little better, and I had made some friends at Breakfast. Tessa, Raachel and Lissie who had all met in Florence doing a teaching course. We all sharted sharing out stories and decided to walk around together, it was nice to have company again. We chatted about Twilight ...

... 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.

... cabbies, who would not take us, we found a gypsy cab and Mandi bargained him down to a 35 euro ride home. And that's how we ended up blasting along the very roads we had biked earlier, in a random cab just hoping to get home. And we did, he dropped us off right in front of our door.

The next day, we were headed for the Cinque Terre, and I'll tell you more about that in the next.

Jael

... he was here this day to inform all that he will be back next year, after recovering from his terrible accident. 3 drivers... 3 cars... This will be an interesting 2010 campaign.

The FXX and retired F1 car works are as equally amazing as anything else. 26 of the 30 FXX's were in store waiting for the next private owner campaign. Including number 30, the last one built especially for Michael.

Maranello, Emilia-Romagna, Italy travelingmoores

... desk clerk our passports and she looks for the reservation and takes a while to find us in the system. And she tells us our room is Monet. So now I'm really curious about what this room is like. We get in and the place is huge, especially by Italian standards, king bed (actually 2 twins pushed together... not really that comfy but who can complain), satellite tv with English programs, a fridge, a thing to make your pants ...

... 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 ...

... We found a gelato shop and with a lot of hand signals communicated that we had no idea where we were, and did they know where this hotel was??? A man who was having his afternoon espresso offered to give us a lift – through more hand signals he let us know that he thought he knew where the hotel was, and he was married with kids and we had nothing to worry about! Plus it was pretty much that or continue to stand on the side of the road in the middle of ...

... of day-trippers pouring out of the streets away from Piazza delle Erbe, and we somehow missed Verona’s most famous tourist spot, Juliet’s mythical balcony from that Shakespeare play, in the small amount of time we had to meander the streets. But we had to press on because dinner was waiting.

Heading westwards to Brescia and then making for Iseo (a town on a lake of the same name) without any real idea of where we were going, we were hampered ...

... each on every corner. Bologna was kind of disappointing. The city was dirty, the university was dirty, and the church was... very dirty. The best moments in Bologna were actually an incredible lunch I had and the Bongos Stephanie bought at a flea market. I hope everyone enjoys these pictures. I've recently learned that my friends are giving their friends at home my travel pod so they don't have to write. You are all more than welcome to subscribe. Brian