Day 325: Ravenna

Time to leave Bologna! Early morning start, walked over to the station and caught taxi out to the airport. Picked up our hire car with no problems, got ourselves a VW Golf which was nice, particularly since we'd only paid for a much smaller Fiat 500!

Headed south-east out of the city onto the freeway, and made our first stop at the town of Imola. This is the location of a grand prix track where the San Marino grand prix was held for several years (though it's obviously not in San Marino). It's notorious as the track where Ayrton Senna had his fatal crash, and I wanted to see the memorial erected at the track.

Found our way to the track and the statue, just near the crash site. Lots of flags, notes and various bits and pieces left by previous visitors which was nice. Spent a few minutes looking around and contemplating - he was always my favourite driver when I was a kid, and him dying was something I remember very clearly.

Back on the road, we drove another hour or so eastwards to Ravenna, just near the Adriatic sea. Ravenna is a pretty little town, with most of the central streets blocked off to traffic. The world heritage site here is a series of Christian monuments from the 5th and 6th centuries - mostly old churches and basilicas. But what's incredible about them is that they are all filled with incredible art dating from that period. The mostly-mosaic pieces are so early that the iconography is quite different - eg depicting Jesus as beardless, nude forms, and some incredible stylised works of Biblical scenes.

There's 8 monuments in total on the list and we managed to visit five of them, thoroughly enjoying each one. And I could film inside for all except one, which was great! Really enjoyed it.

Finished with Ravenna, we made our way late in the day south along the coast to Gradara where we had our Airbnb. A reasonably large ground floor apartment in the suburbs, we visited the supermarket for some provisions and then settled in for the evening. Decided after the pricey meal last night that staying in for a few nights would be a good option! And the pasta options in the supermarket are fantastic, as you'd expect.Read more