9.2.12 Bologna

I forgot how much I remembered Stansted Airport. I guess that's what happens when you end up sleeping in it on multiple occasions.

I had to get over to Ryanair to have them stamp my boarding pass. Turns out there was a massive line but I think I basically ended up cutting somehow. I’d like to think there were multiple lines. Probably weren’t. Oh well.

Security was really easy. They even let me put my laptop in the same bin as my other stuff. I was living the life of luxury.

Stansted has an interesting way of working. In the huge waiting area, they have flight boards and they’ll announce the gates over time. So a bunch of people hang around staring at these boards. I went and found a chair in the corner and slept for 20 minutes. I woke up next to a British family. It’s always exciting to find out what sort of environment you’ll wake up in. I’ve started becoming paranoid about missing flights, so I set both my phones and held them in each hand just in case my right hand was way more sensitive than my left or something.

The flight was fine. Don’t remember any of it. Luke suggested I get a map of Bologna from the tourism desk, so I did. It’s pretty nice. I went outside and got a cab, I think I even said ‘Solferino’ right. It took maybe 15 minutes and cost 14 Euros, so not too bad.

Luke was there when I got in. He’s alive still, which was a concern. If he wasn’t it would have put a serious damper on the trip. He showed me his apartment, which when I talked to him a couple months ago he described as really small. It’s huge. I guess not everyone is used to living in big city apartments. The bathroom here is not only bigger than my first apartment, but way nicer.

We went for a walk and he pointed some stuff out. The whole city is full of porticos covering the sidewalks. It’s a really beautiful town. The snow they had looked like a ton, some of the cars were almost completely buried. But it wasn’t too cold. The town is almost all medieval, although many of the exteriors of the buidings were covered with that Itanian stuccoy material in bright reds and yellows, sort of taking away from it. But some of the buildings were still brick and looked super old. I’d walk past places and see 1472 on the side. It’s crazy most of the area I’m in pre-dates Columbus.

We went to a café over by Luke’s school. We got cappuccinos and a pastry filled with cream. Both were excellent. We hung out and talked there for a maybe an hour.

We went over to get me a sim card and the guy at the store only spoke a little English. He wanted me to give him my ‘document’ (meaning passport) and I handed him my phone. Luke’s Italian is decent but not perfect by any means. I ended up getting a sim card with 150 minutes and 150 texts for 20 Euros. I had no idea what I was doing the whole time and I’m still not sure if it was the right thing to do. Whatever.

Luke went to class and I walked back to his place. I wanted to take a 40 minute nap but that turned into about three hours. I needed it. I never want to sleep when I’m traveling, it feels like wasted time. But being miserable while traveling is also generally miserable. I showered and went out to explore.

The city itself is pretty small. I ended up walking all the way to one of the old city gates from Medieval times. Took maybe 30-40 minutes.

I basically just wandered around and stumbled on San Stefano, which has parts dating from the 9^th century. Apparently it’s three churches under one roof. Some you could tell were nearly a thousand years old. They also had really incredible courtyards. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be taking pictures in the churches or not, so I'm taking my chances this won't be the determining factor on my afterlife destination.

I was getting hungry which meant it was time for my first of what was going to be far too many gelatos of the trip. I found a place called Vechio where I got a cone with nougat, milk chocolate, and chestnut flavors (chestnut was probably best. I only had real chestnuts once, with Analeigh in LA, which I burnt very badly. The gelato was probably better.)

As I walked around, I noticed if you looked into a lot of the buildings they had courtyards or timber roofs or old archways. The streets are narrow and often cobblestones. There aren’t even a ton of American stores here, other than McDonald’s and Foot Locker from some reason. It’s refreshing to hear not English everywhere. I haven’t seen too many tourists and I don’t really expect to, especially not at this time of the year.

Luke came back and we started working out our Triste/Slovenia trip which I’m looking forward to a lot. We went down for dinner around the corner at an old restaurant (it was Italian, which I guess all food here is technically). We were the first ones in the restaurant at around 7 p.m. and were the last to leave around 11. We had a great meal. I got spaghetti with vegetables, arguably the best I’ve ever had. The noodles were much thicker than the ones I’ve had in America. Something about the sauce is really great in Italy. And the tomatoes. I can’t quite figure out what it is. The bread was also pretty delicious, although that’s hard to mess up. For desert we split a frozen cream with chocolate thing. It was way better than my description.

We spent a couple hours talking about traveling, sports, who Brendan Shanahan was traded for, things like that, as well as what we are doing with our lives. It was good to catch up. The time went by rather fast.

Tomorrow we’re getting up and going to a church on a hill outside of the city center before he has to go to school. I’m going to try to get opera tickets for us too. At some point we’ll need to plan our trip a little, we’re looking at leaving at 8:10 on Saturday for Trieste.

Today was a nice, relatively relaxing day. I’m still exhausted but tomorrow I should be feeling a lot better. I really like it here so far.