Bologna!

on Tuesday, March 9, 2010


Following the wonderful trip to Bergamo, I was excited when my roommate invited me to Bologna the next day. She ended up wanting to go later in the day with two guys from the US, but I still wanted to go earlier in the morning so that I could spend more time in the city and see more things. On Saturday morning I met my roommates friends at the train station at 7am and our trip began. I had met the two guys before and they are both really nice and fun people so I was excited. Their names are Bruno and Fernando and they are from Chile and Brazil respectively. Between the three of us we represented South America pretty well! Since Fernando speaks Portuguese and Bruno speaks Spanish, they find it easier to communicate in Italian so the 3 of us spoke Italian the ENTIRE day! It was funny because we could have probably gotten by speaking English, Spanish, or Portuguese but the 3 of us from S.America spoke in our 3rd language!

We took a 3-hour train because it was considerably less expensive (12.50Euros vs. 90Euros) but we were all so tired from getting up at 5:30AM that we just slept and rested on the train and the ride went by really quickly. When we arrived in Bologna the weather was absolutely amazing. It was easily the most beautiful day I have seen here in Italy. I don't think I saw a single cloud in the sky the entire day. Unfortunately some of my pictures turned out too bright from the sun, but I would trade nice weather for bright pictures any day. 



Once in Bologna, we were all pretty hungry and Bruno and Fernando wanted to head straight to McDonald's so we each got a couple cheeseburgers and left to explore the beautiful city. We headed to the historic district and it was really nice. The church in the center was HUGE! Definitely not as big as the Duomo da Milano but  probably bigger than the others I have seen so far. In the square near the middle of the city (apparently all old cities have a square in the middle) there was a big statue that everyone was sitting around and enjoying the warm sun so we did the same for a while. Then we walked around and saw the other building and headed to a really tall tower which you could go to the top of. Next to the tall tower that we went to the top of, there is a  smaller tower and these two towers are the symbol of the city. Here is link to the towers so you can read about them! Inside the tower there are stairs that lead to the top and it took us like 15 minutes to make it to the top! I can't remember the last time I climbed so many steps at one time. Once we got to the top, it was worth it because the views were spectacular! All of the buildings are brick and have a similar look so it was just beautiful to see them all from above, especially on such a nice day. 



After the tower we continued on our trek and met up with my roommate and her friends. After that we were ready for lunch so we found a small restuarant to eat a bowl of the famous pasta with Bolognese (meat) sauce. After the pasta I had in Siena, I would say this was the 2nd best I have eaten here and I wish I could have eaten like 5 more servings. After the wonderful lunch we went and got gelato which was also delicious. I got 3 different servings and was surprised when the chocolate gelato was actually dark chocolate, which I hadn't tried in years. It was great! I had a really nice day with Bruno and Fernando and really enjoyed speaking Italian with them- I hope I get the chance to travel with them again!


After a long day of walking around and exploring the city and its many churches it was nice to sit back down in the train and rest for the 3 hour ride home. Once we got into Milano the guys wanted to go back to McDonald's (I was almost in disbelief) so we ate dinner and then I came back home. That evening I ended up going to Johan's place because he had a bunch of people over and then over to Emelie and Jarina's (2 really nice girls from Sweden) place because one of the guys we were with couldn't get into the club we tried to go to because the bouncer wanted to feel special. 


Overall, I had a wonderful day and the perfect weather will make my memory of Bologna that much better!!

0 comments:

Post a Comment