Bella Bologna

Saturday 19th August 2023

Today is our first full day in Bologna which is famous for its food, its history including the fact it has the first university in Italy. We are planning to sample its food, not its education. 

But first of all, it has come to someone's attention that Bologna FC is playing AC Milan in Bologna while we are here. Believe it or not!   What are the chances of getting a ticket for such an enormous football (soccer no more) game? Find out later.

But even more first is breakfast, our first in this hotel which I booked exclusive of breakfast. So we have to pay 15 euro each. It better be good.

It was OK, no gluten-bloody-free bread but i did get an assortment of bread like products including a muffin.

All packaged stuff but at least I could have eggs, bacon, cheese and yoghurt with fruit. Thank god I am not dairy intolerant.  (Glass half full me)  And they did not seem to have charged us, even better (dad would be happy).

And then it was off to the centre of town to check out the church and try to buy soccer, oops football tickets at a shop we are told is nearby. So it is meant to be about a 15 minute walk. Hmm, hot day, one disabled walker and so we decided to take a taxi. Good except on a weekend, cars are not allowed to go into the city so we still had a fair walk even with the taxi. No problem.

Before doing anything else, we went to the shop selling tickets and were surprised to find we could buy tickets, way up in the furthest corner of the stadium but still tickets.  We needed passports and they took an amazing amount of info to buy sport tickets. Apparently they need the information as a result of football violence etc. Great.

And then off to visit the ancient church of Santo Petronio. In an amazing piazza it was a bit ordinary on the outside but beautiful inside.

On the way we found a Chinese restaurant

and saw a statue from behind, nice.

And then from the front.

And then to the church

More naked men???

An amazing beautiful church. Then we had coffee at a cute patisserie and they served coffee with lids. Have never seen that before. I ordered a hopefully gluten-bloody-free macaron and as we were leaving, saw the sign for the wheat free tiramisu on the sign below. I was devastated!

Check out wheat free tiramisu bottom left @#$%^

We went to a Lego store where you could make your own. We didn't.

Next was the Museo of Medieval things.(something like that)

Naked

Me with a suit of armour which may have saved me from injury!

And then  walking home, i had to take photos of the amazing porticos and statues, this one dressed and on a horse. (Garibaldi, of whom you may have heard)

Paul in front of an old archway. They are scattered around the city and are quite old.

The streets 

I love this quote from Frederico Felini

Near us but I will never know what is at the top.

A really old medieval part of a building in the middle of the street.

 

Back to  the hotel for our afternoon rest and then drink in the hotel bar. Holidays are hard work.

We decide to walk back towards the plaza, centre of town and find somewhere different for dinner.  Not Chinese.

We find a restaurant and only when they confirm they have air conditioning do we enter. It is really hot.

Nice ceiling

Two 'bread' offerings. Guess which is gluten-bloody-free.

My own half bottle of wine of Rose. Nice. Paul got his own half bottle of red. No waste this way.

Unfortunately i forgot to take photos of our meals. Paul had tagliatelle bolognaise and a swordfish dish while I just had  bass with vegies which they assured me could be prepared gluten-bloody-free.   After my glutening, i feel really vulnerable and at the mercy of restaurants and how well they understand the gluten-bloody-free thing. Fingers crossed as usual.

Our meals were lovely and the air-conditioning, while not great, kept us alive.

We had  dinner about 8ish which was still a bit early as lots of people arrived after 8.30/9ish.

But i think we are getting into the swing of dinner at 8.30ish. So Italian.