Thanksgiving Vacation 2013: Full day in Bologna

Drinking a beer with my sister

 So awake I was for my first full day in the city of Bologna. It was bright and sunny outside, and as we noticed as we flew in the previous night, it was dark by five, so daylight hours were not to be wasted. Breakfast was the first task of the day. The hotel offered a free breakfast with enough selections of pastries, fruits and of course coffee to fill me up for at least a few hours. After we finished, a short break in our rooms to gather warm clothes and cameras and out the door we went.

We had no specific place to visit first, so we headed to the closest plaza. With the bright sunlight lighting up the buildings, it was time to start taking photos. So every building and statue was fair game for photographing. Near this square, whose name I can't remember, was an information center. Inside, where it was warm, my brother talked to the lady behind the desk who took out a map and circled the places to see in the city. So our day had now been planned. Follow the numbers on the map.

Old building

The closest place to us, other than the plaza we were already at, was the library. Not sure what to expect to see the the library, we walked in and soon noticed that the floor in some places was made of thick glass and below you could see ruins! Now our goal was to go under the library, and turns out it was just one floor down. The entrance was free, as were almost all the places we saw, but they had a donation box so I put in some coins. Inside the ruins were old city walls, streets and wells. Also visible from below were the people walking above who you could see through the thick glass floor. My brother and I went upstairs so my sister could take a photo of us from below, and of course I took a photo of her from above.

After we saw all there was to see in the library, we continued our walking out in the city. I'm not going to bore you with every place we saw, and I don't remember all of them either. I do have the map we used sitting next to me, but even looking at the map I have trouble remembering where we went. There were the usual cathedrals and churches, but if you looked around, almost every building was decorated with paintings and other art.

Looking down in the library

We did walk in circles some, passing by one place we wanted to see and having to come back. Because the tall tower was closed, when we saw that one of the buildings had a observation deck open, we opted to pay the three Euros and climb to the top. This building was under renovation, so the stairs were actually the scaffolding the workers would use to do there work. The building was only about four stories tall, but at the top you still had a good view of the city. More photo of more buildings were taken.

Inside the library

Some time during the day, we stopped for lunch. It wasn't easy to find a good place to eat, even though there were "bars" on every corner. These are the places where the locals eat at the bar standing up for a quick snack and they leave. Most of them had very little sit-down seating. We wanted a sit-down type restaurant, so those were harder to find, but we did find one, however, I don't remember what I ate. Lets assume it was pasta. After eating lunch we continued on. A little further away was a place where one of the cities' underground rivers was visible running between buildings. The photos we saw made it look nice, so we followed the map, stopping for gelato along the way, which is always nice, and found the river. From there the next closest site was the university area. There really wasn't much to see there, but it did have the largest concentration of younger people as Bologna is a big university city. I think this university was founded in the year 1000! Now that's old. From there we continued to wander until we found what was the ancient gate to the port of San Donato, a site that wasn't even on the map.

One of the few parks with trees

We then walked back towards our hotel and stopped at a few more places. During the day, we did check if the lost luggage had been delivered to our hotel. It ended up arriving in the afternoon, so we all took a break before heading back out. As the sun was setting, we had more time to walk around the squares and explored yet another cathedral. When it started getting dark, we took another break at our hotel before dinner. We planned on going to the same Irish Pub as the night before, and since happy hour started at 7:30, we still had two hours. Well, I didn't want to sit in my room for too long, because I was afraid I'd fall asleep and not wake up for eight hours. So as seven approached, we headed back out, walked around some more and then went to the pub.

We found a good table near the bar and placed our food orders at the bar. It started to get busy, and suddenly a woman asked me if I spoke English and then inquired if we were there to see the match, meaning a soccer game. She was basically saying she wanted our table, but we were not moving. I had a very good double cheese burger and beer, and after we were done eating we left and our table was quickly taken even before the staff could clean it. The match had not yet started. Hopefully no riot took place and I hope the home team won.

Inside a cathedral

Well, it was now late enough to turn in for the night. We were all very tired. Our plan the next day was to meet for breakfast once again, check out of the hotel and take the train to Venice. The trains to Venice left at least every hour, so we planned on catching one around 11. So back in my room, I downloaded the photos I had taken during the day, posted them online and crawled into bed. I tried to watch TV but all the channels were Italian. Not even CNN or any other news stations. So I tried to read but was too tired. Pretty soon I was sound asleep and had a dream that Tommy Shaw from Styx stole my camera for some reason. I have lot of strange dreams, so this wasn't unusual. Hopefully I'd wake up refreshed for another long day.