Arrivederci Italia

It was raining in Rome when we walked to the train station this morning.  We watched the Tuscan countryside whip by from the high speed train, the train got up to a speed of 247 km/hr. There wasn’t much of a view from Florence to Bologna as the route is mainly in tunnels.  It pretty much rained all day.

We are in Bologna, staying in a really cool B&B near the train station in an old building.  There are a lot of covered porticos in Bologna so we walked around town and went for a bit of lunch at a sort of cafeteria that was full of locals.  John and I just did a lot of pointing to communicate our food selections.  Bologna is known for being a food town.  There are bars and food places everywhere, all loaded with decadent looking sweets.  Of course there is a lot of cheese, we bought half a kilo of Reggiano Parmigiano for about a quarter of the price we pay at home.  On the way back to the B&B, we bought some supplies for dinner tonight and then went for tea.

Prices are much higher here and the service is pretty paltry when compared to southern Italy and Sicily.  Bologna is an orderly and tidy place with wide streets and nice buildings but I would take the chaos and the grit of the south over this any day.  It is colder here in the north, only 7C!

The bus to the airport departs from the train station, which is only a couple of minutes on foot so it is very convenient.

That is a wrap for our trip to Italy.  This is an outstanding country to visit, we loved Sicily the most, went crazy for all the ancient ruins and really enjoyed the countryside.

The only photo John took today, the Fountain of Neptune