Ramada Encore Fiera Bologna

... 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!<br>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 ...

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.

... miles from a little town north of Bologna to Ferrara. Luckily they have bike friendly trains here, because that's how we got home. <br><br>That night, we met Gherardo, a friend of my former professor's, who used to live in DC, so spoke very good English, for dinner. He took us to a "typical" Bologna restaurant, I ate amazing bolognese, and we peppered Gherardo with questions about Italy, Italians ...

... there was a free breakfast buffet which we took full advantage of. We didnt really do much in the actual city of Bologna. We more or less used it as a base to get to other places for day trips, returning to the city to eat and sleep. The food was great; we had our first pizza in Italy and it was tasty.... its fun knowing that things like pizza are only going to get better when we get closer to its point of origin (Napoli)<br>

... and they said that the night we reserved was the next night and not that night. the guy gave us two "oppurtunities" he said....you can sleep in teh bar on mattrasses or i can call elsewhere for you to get a different place to stay for tonight and you can check in tomorrow. we were like ugh lets look at the bar. it was dirty and ppl were down there hanging out and drinking. the man was so nice and said he would clean it and set up fresh beds. we decided to do ...

... the tourist traps because they have such a skewed perspective on what we want). I try to pick a place that has a small menu, no more than a handul of pastas, appys, and meats. If it's got 20 types of pizzas and pastas and meats you know they are cutting corners and taking shortcuts in the kitchen, and are trying to appease as many people as possible rather than focussing on the quality. Mind you this wouldn't apply to the big fancy restaurants, but then again we're not eating at those places.

... are friends from elsewhere constantly calling in and staying a night or 2, so there's always someone around and we go out often. At the Castello Sismondo there is an exhibition of Federico Fellini's dream notebooks - for 30 years he kept a notebook by the side of his bed and recorded his dreams, then transferred them to 2 large books, along with his illustrations. Needless to say, if you have seen his films, he had incredibly imaginative dreams. I am on my way again to Leysin in ...

... give me something for all we had done for him while he was in Oklahoma. Of course for those of you who know me, which I do not think any STRANGERS are reading my blog, it made me cry. In the box was a beautiful pair of gold, aquamarine and ruby earrings. Extremely unusual, you will just have to wait until I can show them to ...

(Originally published at http://www.troysgonewalkabout.com)<br>< br>Though it&#8217;s free of charge, not everyone can tour the Ferrari factory &#8211; there&#8217;s just the small matter of admission being limited to those who actually own one. But with Hoges the proud owner of a blue 1979 Ferrari 308 and a member of the Australian Ferrari Club, it had been a relatively straightforward process of cross-checking his chassis numbers and then setting a date to come ...

... gelato. We wanted to go back to the hotel but we had our second transit disaster. We got on the right number bus going the wrong way thinking that it would just do a big loop. Well, it didnt just do a big loop and we ended up riding half an hour out of town where we were then kicked off. We had to go across the street, wait for the next bus, and take it all the way back into town and through the same stops to finally reach our ...