Day 15

Italy 2011

Day 15

Our first breakfast at our hotel (included in the price) was in the beautiful garden, and it was wonderful.  We then took a train to the walled town of Ferrara. We read that most of the residents own a bike, and half of them are joggers. We rented bikes at a place just outside the train station. We wanted to say, “Wait….don’t you have anything newer????” But we didn’t. Our bikes were covered with dust and dirt, and Bob’s bike made this terrible, and I mean TERRIBLE, grinding sound. He certainly didn’t need a bell on his bike. Everyone knew he was coming.

We thought it would be like Lucca, since there is a path along the top of the wall around the city. We didn’t have a map, and we found out the hard way that the city is four times the size of Lucca. We rode the wall for an hour, but then we decided to cut across the city to get back to the train station where we rented our bikes. It wasn’t the short ride we thought it would be. Once again, a friendly local resident, in the form of a college student, came to our rescue. We asked how to get to the train station, and she told us to follow her, because that was where she was going. Evidently most residents own these old rusty bikes, and when they want to take the train to another city, they ride the bikes and park and lock them outside the station where they will be waiting when they return. That’s what she was doing. There seemed to be hundreds of bikes parked outside the station.

We turned in our bikes and walked back to the city center where we looked at a few ancient sites. One was the Duomo (cathedral) and another was the Castello Estense, a moated four-towered castle. It was huge and beautiful.

 On our walk back to the train station, Bob wanted to try mortadella, this region’s incomparable sausage, and a very distant cousin to American-style bologna.

We took the train back to Bologna and rested for a few hours. For dinner, we went to a trattoria highly recommended by a worker at our hotel. It’s called Trattoria Anna Maria. Since it was back across town, we decided to use the bikes provided by our hotel. At times we were cruising down quiet streets, other times we were in crazy traffic of cars, busses, bikes, and pedestrians only inches from us and our bikes, and sometimes we found ourselves going the wrong way down a one-way street. Of course, helmets weren’t an option. No one wears them here, either. Bob thought it was great fun, while Shari thought it was harrowing….hoping she would live to tell about it.

Our dinner was wonderful….the best we’ve had in Bologna.  Shari had Roast Guinea Hen and Bob had Tortellini with Ragu Sauce.