Locanda Solarola Bologna

... tourists like me, enjoying my tree. But enjoying me in this tree. I do not stare but continue reading my book as my picture is stolen from me.
A Little boy walks down the stone path, following him, like a puppy is a yellow and green dump truck, which is attached to him at the wrist
I see the 'senoirs club' all the white head bobbing together, on foot, or on bicycles shuffling along to converge around the ...

... from rocking out of tight situations.

Ferrara Highlights
9200 meters of city walls commissioned by Duke Ercole d'Este and built between 1493 and 1505 with walking paths on top.

Castello Estense de Ferrara--a defensive structure from the early middle ages that dominates the old city surrounded by moat. The Castello Estense was menacing from the outside and lavishly decorated on the inside. You could feel the history and understand the ...

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.

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 ...

So we spent a bit of time the night before we got here trying to secure some accomodation. We found the hotel online and it seemed like a good value even if it was a bit out of the way. Whats a 20 minute bus ride anyway. So we get on the bus, which is the right bus going in the wrong direction; we found this out when we got kicked off at the last stop. So we get off and then get on the next bus headed in the other direction ...

... swimming...

Austalians came over and now did a load of wash, only the third since arriving in Europe..

We may hop on the train to Florence tomorrow AM, I think it is only 50 minutes away....

CIAO!! Favorite memory-the lady in the bakery giving us extra cookies and the local expresso place that will become our second stomping ground.

Happy August, lots closed here for the month, they have signs, will be reopened in Sept...how funny!!

... in a park on a dirt soccer field surrounded by a chain link fence. Pasquale said that it's the Warriors practice field. I was disgusted. It made me very grateful for the new field turf being worked on at Stadio Europa and the adjacent field turf soccer field that we are currently on. I was pretty unimpressed with the Warriors, they had two import safeties, one played quarterback too. Both were solid players but didn't do anything that blew me away. The ...

... to be greeted by a clean-cut Samuele. It was a wonderful reunion! We were off to Bologna on Monday. Oddly, as close as it is to Florence, we hadn't visited it before. This was in part because there are so many conventions held there...more in the fall than the winter...so, securing hotel rooms had always been difficult and expensive. On this trip I found Hotel Paradise...and let me tell you, it was! It was only about a 10 minute walk ...

We only had about a day and a half to spend in Bologna but it was well worth it to be able to see the red buildings and eat the rich foods. Bologna is known as La Grassa (The Fat) not because the people are fat OH NO but because of the food and how ...

This day is the holiday of the city Bologna, since San Petronio is not only the name of the main cathedral, but also the city patron. So in the early afternoon the statue of San Petronio in the city centre was blessed and in the evening there was a ...