Mark says, “After two whirlwind nights in Venice, this morning we departed for Bologna. We again consumed a very poor breakfast before heading down to the docks near San Marco square to catch a water bus back to the airport and our car. It was another pleasant water-based trip, this time past the island of Murano, where they make the glass. While the water bus is much slower than a normal bus, it’s probably the simplest way to enter and exit Venice. We found the car as we had left it and headed to Bologna.
We arrived at our hotel (the Savoy Country House) on the outskirts of Bologna early in the afternoon. It was a very nice hotel, much better than Venice and half the price! After a short break we drove into Bologna hoping to locate a Laundromat we had found on-line. Of course this proved to be impossible due to a combination of one-way streets, road works and a dumb-ass sat nav – no it was not the driver! We gave up and decided instead to park somewhere and have a look around the main square.
So the sat nav says ‘drive 1.4km, then turn left, then turn right, etc’ when we are 2 blocks to the right from the square and its parking lot, unbelievable. So, we finally park and walk into the piazza (Michelle: We walked right into the middle of a music concert with a few questionably talented musicians playing on a huge stage in the centre of the plaza. It was a ‘festival for fitness’ to encourage the Bolognians to get out and be more active – no offence to my smoking friends, but it would have seemed to me to be more worthwhile to run the occasional ‘dangers of smoking’ campaign instead as it seems that almost everyone in Europe smokes. Bologna is a university town, so it was full of young Uni students who all seemed pretty fit and energetic to me – at least around the stage they did!)
As it was Sunday and most of Bologna was closed we headed back to the hotel to have dinner there. As it turned out, this was the best decision we made in Bologna. The meal was excellent despite there being no Spaghetti Bolognese on the menu”. (Michelle: we had tagliatelle with rabbit and golden truffles for an entrée and it was amazing).
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