Hello Bologna!

After two uneventful flights, we landed at BLQ … Bologna’s Marconi G. Airport … a small facility that saw us deplaning directly onto the tarmac, walking to the terminal, and going through immigration formalities.

Just three days prior, the EU rolled out the new EES program. The initials stand for Entry/Exit System, marking the first step toward the long-awaited ETIAS program, which — once implemented — will require advance travel authorizations for visa-exempt travelers to enter 30 European countries.

With EES now active, we were able to join the shorter immigration queue to use the automated e-Gates to enter Italy … something we hadn’t been able to do when we visited Switzerland and Italy this summer. What a relief! From deplaning to exiting the airport with our bags, it took 15 minutes or less. Then, we hopped on the Marconi Express, an elevated electric monorail that connects the airport to Bologna Centrale, the train station.

The Via Valdonica AirBNB we rented for the first part of our stay in Bologna was just a 20-minute walk from the train station … a pleasant stroll even with bags in tow. I had to keep my phone in my purse to avoid stopping every few minutes to snap photos of everything that caught my eye along the way.

The apartment is in the Old Jewish Ghetto district of Bologna’s Centro Storico (historic center). Finding it was easy thanks to the directions provided by the apartment manager. Bright and airy — and with some quirky furnishings — it looks and feels like this will be a comfortable place for our stay. … and convenient too, since it’s pretty much walking distance to everything the city has to offer.

After checking out the amenities in the apartment, we headed out to grab a few groceries to tide us over until Mui goes to Conad City, the larger supermarket down the street tomorrow.

Our bags are now unpacked, the groceries are neatly stored, and our bellies are full after a simple dinner — a deconstructed caprese salad off sorts with juicy tomatoes, creamy burrata, olive oil, and aged balsamic vinegar … and a side of prosciutto. We were too tired from a long day of travel, especially after spending yesterday showing our friends from the US and Canada around İzmir, so we skipped the wine and beer this time. We’ll definitely make up for it tomorrow!

Bedtime!

P.S. You’ll see a lot of graffiti in the photos from our neighborhood. If we hadn’t already learned that graffiti is a way of life in Bologna, we might have left as soon as we arrived.

So what makes graffiti a way of life here? Here’s the AI response I got when I did a search on the web (an answer confirmed earlier by the Bolognese man Mui was walking with on the plane): “… due to its large student population, long history of political expression through street art, and the presence of a thriving street art scene. The city's historic architecture, particularly the iconic porticoes, provides abundant canvas space for both artistic works and unauthorized tags, creating a constant debate about vandalism versus art.”Read more