Full of Bologna

We woke up early Friday morning to catch our Train to Milan (4:30 am to be exact), we got ready to go and caught the 5:09 am bus to the train station for our 5:45 am train (yes all of these times were in the morning). We got on the train without any problems-thinking we were going to get in around 11:30. We soon discovered we really only had until 9:30 but we managed to sleep uncomfortably most of the way.

We got into the Milan and went to put our luggage in storage lockers but as it is Milan it was actually this valet type service-a.k.a. an overpriced pain in my ass. But we checked our bags and went down to try and figure out the metro system. While carefully studying the map of the metro system we were interrupted by some kind of protest involving people with flags (of course in Italian and thus all greek to us) blowing very loudly on whistles in the very enclosed metro underground area. After they made their way out of the station and our ears stopped ringing we figured out our line. When we went to climb the stairs out to the piazza it turned out each step was actually a piano key so as you walked up it played music. I now know the staircase I want in my dream home.

First things first, after very little sleep we sought out some coffee-and found very good cappuccino. Then we went to climb the duomo. The inside of the church was giant-and there was this audio visual chapel underneath which I still don't really understand. But we climbed to the top and it was really cool because we basically got to walk along the rooftop (I even walked the ridgepole grandma!) After climbing back down we walked down the famous shopping street with Louis Vuitton and Prada. We made the hike to see the Last Supper Painting, we got all the way there only to find out it was sold out for the day-apparently only so many people can go in at a time in order to preserve the painting... I say questionable they don't have that standard for the Mona Lisa. So we walked to the old fortress which was really large and old looking and thus pretty dern cool. Then we went off in search of risotto the alleged specialty of Milan, we found some that was pretty good, though I haven't had a lot of risotto so I don't have a great base for comparison. Then went to the train station to catch our train to Bologna.

We got on our train and arrived in Bologna without problems. On google maps it looked like another Bologna train station was closer to our hotel so we got on a train to the other station, only one stop away. When the train pulled in Grace went to open the door and it only opened half way before shutting again and keeping us on the train. We were thus forced to ride it to the next stop where we got off. The train going the other direction didn't come for half an hour so after looking up the hotel on my iPhone we realized the walk was only half an hour so we started walking the 4.8 km to the hotel. Fortunately we stopped for gilatto, Unfortunately, when we got to the address of what we thought was the hotel it wasn't. After several minutes of confusion we called the hotel and realized we were in fact still 7-8 km away from the hotel. Fortunately we were able to catch the very last bus which was still about a 25 minute ride. We made it to the hotel eventually, and Grace's head over heels stumble through the front door alerted them to our presence. We checked into the "4 star hotel" and then as it was already about 9:30 decided to just have dinner in the hotel restaurant and call it a night. Though we did all get the Bolognese pasta dish.

We slept in the next morning and then caught the bus into the city. The first stop was the two towers, one of which was leaning and one of which we climbed. These were the hardest steps to go down. After our climb up and down we looked for somewhere to have lunch. We got some amazing pizza and it was so nice we ate outside. Then we checked out this fountain that was controversial because (allegedly) when the sun shines in just the right way his hand makes it looks like he has a giant erection-but I couldn't see it. Then we visited a church that was originally supposed to be larger than St. Peter's though the Pope went ahead and stopped that. We grabbed some gilatto afterward, and visited another church-this one was interesting because it had plants inside. Then we headed toward the medieval museum but on the way we saw a crowd watching something, it turned out to be a cracked out woman probably about 55 doing what appeared to be some sort of dance in a purple velvet leotard with an equally old man behind her with a microphone saying italian phrases every once in a while-that was an experience. We got to the Medieval museum which was free, yet they were still very adamant about frequently checking our tickets-again useless bureaucracy at its finest. Then we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

We had dinner at a fairly classy restaurant where the portions left something to be desired. But the food was good. We hit up this Irish bar and had a beer while watching the Olympics. After that we were all pretty tired so we caught a cab-as the busses stopped running-and went to bed. We woke up the next morning and took the bus to the train station where we just caught the train. We had a bit of a layover in Milan, and despite the high end fashion industry the food selection at the train station was pretty much limited to McDonalds. Then about 20 minutes outside of Geneva the train stopped, we don't really now why but it didn't start again until we were about 40 minutes late.

All in all it was a good weekend, fairly relaxing, time to sleep. I liked Bologna a lot because it was more Italian in flavor than the other more touristy cities we visited in Italy.

Best part of Italy: hands down the food

Best part of Germany: the beer

Best part of France: understanding at least SOME of the language

Best part of Geneva: TBD