This was our last day in Bologna, so it shaped up to be a day of meandering around a town that was starting to familiar, while also hitting a few spots that we had not yet hit (as tends to happen after we’ve raised a glass with a local).
We started with Basilica di Santo Stefano, which Fosca referred to as “Seven Churches.” The local name fits, as it’s a compact set of small churches and chapels that run into / overlap each other. If we’d had a knowledgeable guide with us, we easily could have spent a couple of hours getting the history and the nitty gritty, but we’re getting a bit churched out, so we were happy to simply scan a web page as we walked through and be done in half an hour. It was interesting, though.
From there, we headed back to Piazza Maggiore to check out the Bologna city hall and climb up into Torre Accursio—a clock and bell tower that involved a short run of stairs that was even steeper and narrower than Asinelli Tower! But, we got to look at the inner workings of the clock in action, as well as take in a pretty spectacular view of the city from just above the main square—an opportunity to count towers, as well as to look down on the seats and screen that had shown the movie the previous night.
Back to the apartment to get the laundry hung up to dry, a bit of relaxation (er…coding progress on this website), and then back out for a late-ish lunch followed by a couple of hours on electric city bikes—heading well outside of the old city and to the shores of the Reno River. We worked our way down to the railway bridge, where Benton had seen pictures online of some pretty impressive graffiti, which did not disappoint. It’s an odd space—the graffiti artists clearly had plenty of time for their work, but it was also a place where various homeless men were completely sacked out in the middle of the day. And, at least a couple of men seemed to be simply fishing and enjoying the sun—we couldn’t tell if they were homeless or not. We rode some more to check out a “panoramic” view farther up the river (near the base of the path up to San Luca), and that was a pretty underwhelming panorama. But, the riding was fun!
We returned to the flat for a bit more chilling (coding) and then headed out to drinks and dinner on Via del Patrello, which was the “hipster” area according to both our AirBnB host and to Fosca. We’d had dinner there the previous night, but we stopped for drinks at a different bar—with a pretty entertaining waitress—and then walked another block for dinner and wound up at a vegan-oriented (but by no means strictly vegan—we started with a plate of mortadella and parmigiano Reggie our) restaurant with an even more entertaining waitress.
And then…back to the flat to grab Tim’s camera to head back to Piazza Maggiore (or, technically, Piazza Nettuno) for him to try his hand at some slow exposure photos of the Neptune fountain. It turned out…live music that Tim said sounded like Italian zydeco (strange). The photos were pretty much a bust, but the music was interesting for a bit.
An interesting/memorable experience of the day:
Benton: the entertainment level of our food service today—chaos/confusion (twice) at breakfast; the beer (size) upswell for my beer at drinks; the super nice and engaging waitress at dinner
Tim: the fact that the gray/blue bread at dinner was apparently made from…charcoal flour.
