Walking in history

Today was one of our free days in Bologna. The tour doesn’t start until Sunday so we have a few of these so we can scope out the place and recover from the trip.

We walked down to the Piazza Maggiore early and looked around. The Tourist Information Office is in the Piazza so we scored a map for a self guided walking tour.

There are so many Basilicas in Bologna. The first we went to on our tour was the Basilica di San Domenico. They started building this church back in the 1200s and has the tomb of Saint Domenic inside - very ornate. A young Michaelangelo did some of the artwork.

One thing of interest was a piece of sheet music in a frame which was actually written by Mozart when he was 14. It seems Mozart performed in this church in 1770. The piece of music included some edits by one of his teachers. Google Translate is very useful in these situations.

We then walked up to the Basilica di San Stefano which is four churches joined together.

Then it was across to the other side of town past the two towers to one of the canals in Bologna. It looks like Venice.

We then came up the main shopping strip to the Piazza again.

After lunch we went outside the old town into the Giardini Margherita for a walk. This is a bit of open space and felt like Centennial Park in Sydney with lots of playgrounds for kids.

There seems to be a bit of a pattern with the weather. Bright and sunny until about 3pm then an afternoon thunderstorm rolls in complete with small hail. This lasts for about 30 mins then it clears up.

Dinner was a small restaurant across from the hotel. Ramon told us (among many other things) that in Bologna we should try the tortellini, tagliatelle ragu, and the lasagne so we started ticking them off. The food so far is, of course, excellent and very cheap.Read more