Spring Travels Part Two: Italy

Italy.

Bologna and Venice. Two nights in Bologna, three in Venice. Daily diet: cappuccino with pastry, slice o’ pizza and water, pasta and wine. High living. Bologna ‘la rosa’ was indeed covered in a rosy glow when Dan and I came into town. The weather was beautiful. We arrived on a Friday afternoon. We took a taxi to our hotel, Albergo Atlantic, which was only about fifteen minutes.

The streets of Bologna shrouded us in a cloud of warm red – porticos extending for as far as we could see. Shops with cigarettes, chocolate, pastries, cappuccino met us at every corner. We walked these streets fairly soon after settling into our room, which was warm and clean. I was exhausted, and excited by the large beds, with clean sheets, white linens, and large pillows. We had arrived in Italy!

Our stay in Bologna was short and beautiful. Dan spent a fair amount of time with his ex-girlfriend (Italian, a bologna resident), which left me to wander the streets and churches on my own. I enjoyed this time a great deal. My favorite spot in the city was a large church called Eglisa San Dominco. The Ciampo where I found it, was tucked away in a southern part of the city, and seemed to be one of the more open Ciampo’s, with lighting that made the church and cobblestones around it glow under the feet of the few passerby. There were a few shops near the Ciampo, but mostly residential streets that led to other quiet parks, filled with the sunlit weekend days.

We ate some really good food the first night there at a family Trattoria place that was Maria Teresa’s favorite restaurant (Dan’s ex). It was an interesting meal for me, picking up the Italian I could from my base in French and spotty spanish. I understood more than I had expected to, so I was pleased.

Venice was the dream that I had always heard it to be, I felt as if I had landed myself in some sort of European, urban, marine-cultured oasis with good food, beautiful people, and culture at every corner. Our one start hotel proved to be an amazing find – nice people, cozy and surprisingly elegant rooms, and a view over Venesian rooftops and the nightly setting sun... Food in Venice was amazing, every walk a trip into an imagination’s heaven, shopping a danger and an indulgence we explored as rarely as possible, and the canals simply decadent at any time of day.

The first morning, I woke up earlier than Dan, determined to make it to our reduced price breakfast at the sister hotel. To get there, the people at the hotel had given me a little map, that seemed short and simple-enough to follow. Little did I know that my breakfast adventure would take me nearly half-way across Venice... it was a beautiful little escape. I took the close by tragietto to cross the canal, wandered through streets to find the dinky hotel with my reduced-price packaged continental breakfast. I sat outside, even though they had clearly not opened up for season, and it was starting to rain. On my walk home, it started to downpour. My local tragietto was closed because of the weather, so I found myself waiting with a large group of gondola drivers. In hindsight, it would have been an amazing photo – jade green canal to our left, clusters of black and white striped uniform Italian gondola rowers, and a black trench coated, soaked American lady trying to make her way back home... classic setup of course too for a cheezy romance to occur. So one of the striped uniform men sweeps the American lady away under his umbrella, steering her to another way to cross the canal.

Once back at the hotel, Dan and I took another walk and I made my way over to the Duke’s Palace to pay that grand monument a visit. Dinners were amazing in Venice. Other visits included: the Basilica, the Mariner Museum, and walks upon walks...