Firenze to Bologna

Tuesday August 22 to Friday August 23

The last day in Firenze I spent in a fairly laid-back manner - sitting at a wireless internet café for a couple of hours including lunch and catching up on news from elsewhere. Then went shorts shopping to replace those which had grow to enjoy more holes that originally intended. The evening saw Alisha and I heading in to the station to meet Stefano, a local to the area and friend of mine from Freiburg. We went to a local pizzeria for dinner before heading to a pub on the town square for a beer.

It was great to see Stefano again, especially on his home turf. The situation in Freiburg will never be the same again but it was a nice reinforcement that I made real friends around the globe and that whether or not I see them again we had something special in Freiburg that will
stay with us all...

So that's my rant for this blog... back to details.

Wednesday was a long day. We packed up and took the train from Florence to Bologna (that's right - home of bolognaise sauce, lasagna and tortellini). In Bologna we spent a couple of hours finding our way to the hostel before dumping our stuff and making the 6km bus trip back into town. We wandered the main streets for the afternoon before having a drink while we waited for the restaurants to open for dinner (at 7pm!!!). I had a fantastic tortellini all' ragú (with bolognaise sauce) followed by a delicious panna cotta - "very VERY fattening" according to
our friendly waiter.

Then headed back to the hostel for a hot night's sleep.

Yesterday and today we quite relaxed again as we've had to be out of the hostel before 9.30. They've involved walking Bologna's streets, admiring the richly painted buildings, climbing one of Bologna's TWO leaning towers, sitting at café and lying in the gardens reading, studying, listening to music and watching the Italians go about their business.

We head to Venezia early tomorrow where we will spend three days before flying to Paris.