21 March 2012

Travelday - Where we get a pleasant surprise

After much internal debate and discussion about what to write about Bologna - and indeed three different attempts at starting a draft - I have decided, once again, to try to keep it simple. After all, my most commented upon post is the one where I wrote almost nothing (actually after this morning it's the second most commented on but I think this one has more to do with the large gap between posts than anything else).


So, without further ado I give you Bologna -

Left - part of the University  Right - the cathedral

I hadn't actually researched Bologna before we left home - partly because it was a stop of convenience (it was The Sparky's first day driving on the other side of the road so we decided to make is a short trip) and partly because we didn't want to feel as if we had to rush away from Venice so that we could see ... whatever it was there was to see in Bologna.

Once we were on the road though and there were no more directions to give out for a while I took out my handy dandy guidebook and read up a little. Probably the most intriguing thing I read was along the lines of the fact that the cathedral in Bologna was originally designed to be larger than the Vatican. Approximately 200 years into construction the then Pope decided that that was not on and so authorised the construction of a university next door and in the way (apologies to Lonely Planet, this is a very abbreviated version of what they have to say but I lent my book to Little Bro).

Apparently they didn't even bother to redesign the cathedral.

If you squint you can't even tell there's a giant poster covering the building, can you?

There was a medieval festival on while we were there which was a very nice surprise! There were people walking around in full costume, including armor and mail which must have been most uncomfortable in the heat. The flag throwers and their drummers were quite fun to watch.

This photo was taken as we were walking through what seemed to be just a general shopping area. I can't remember which of us looked up and noticed it first but we but did a lot more looking up after that!


I'm sure this must have some significance as everything around it has been taken down (you can see the end of the walls on each side). Now it just sits in the middle of a busy street.


I've since discovered that these are 'the famous' towers of Bologna. They too were just sitting on the side of a busy street - if it wasn't for a group of tourists and their guide stopped at the intersection looking at them we would have walked straight past!


We also ended up with a new Samsonite suitcase and Bologna was the first place I saw and fell in love with my new rings.

So, despite our lack of interest or enthusiasm for Bologna I must say in the end I'm very glad we went and I hope to get back there one day.


Oh! I can't forget to mention the lovely man that we bought our lunch pizza slices off - he was delightfully helpful, his young son was learning English at school and very shyly said 'good bye' to us as we left (so we introduced him to 'see you later'), they looked up the meaning of a couple of different food words to explain them to us and they introduced The Sparky to 'Chino' (which they sold in bottles the size of which we simply do not get in Australia!).

8 comments:

  1. That abrupt cathedral end is too funny, how strange. I love the story behind it:) I haven't been to Bologna, I came close with Firenze but was only there for a day. I'm sure there are plenty of captivating tales to find in any Italian city, though, including this one!

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    1. Reading about it I just thought that there'd be a large, but not as large as it should have been, cathedral standing next to university buildings. We couldn't quite get our heads around what we were seeing when we got there! It seemed like a quite strange, even petulant, response to the change of plans.

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  2. Sometimes the places you don't know much of often the sparkling glittering moments :) And yay for friendly pizzamen!

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    1. I'd almost go so far as to say that the pizza man and his son made my day! (there may have been a little navigational stress earlier on - thanks to google maps, not me - but smiles and good food went a long way to relaxing me back up again)

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  3. So beautiful... I like investigating and treating holidays as an adventure. I read up on basics, but trust my inner instincts to wander the alleys and streets and find out more :)

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    1. This was my basic approach to the holiday, know enough about a place that we didn't get lost or miss out on the 'big' things but not so much that we had no time or space to just wander and enjoy. Somehow though Bologna missed out on even the most basic read up. There really is no way to wrong in Italy though I've decided - there's always something to see even when you don't expect it!

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  4. What great timing to be there during the colourful festival! :)

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    1. It was so unexpected and fun! The second group of flag throwers we saw were unbelievably skilled.

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