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| Piazza Maggiore |
When I arrived in Bologna, I stepped out of the plushy railway station and immediately decided that I needed to hide in a coffee shop, any coffee shop, to get my bearings and use the free WiFi. Most of all it was bitingly cold and I needed a coffee pick me up before taking on the rest of the city.
I got my coffee fix (the barista was this incredibly attractive Asian woman and I think I fell in love a little bit), and then began the thirty-odd minute walk towards the city centre. It was really chilly just the way I liked it, and got progressively less chilly as I walked briskly, sometimes stopping to take photos.
There's not really a lot to say about Bologna. It was a pretty city, but I'm not sure I would spend my time coming here again. It was very compact and was surprisingly full of immigrants - surprising because it was a small-ish city, not the sort of place where you would expect people from other countries to come and make their living. You would expect Rome or Naples for that, one of the big metropolitan cities. I'd looked at accommodation in Bologna whilst planning and had tentatively considered spending a night, but the prices were unnecessarily astronomical so I'd put paid to that notion, and was glad that I had.
Walking around the city centre took me about an hour and a half. Someone tried to sell me weed - do I look like the sort of person who smokes weed, really - and then I walked back to the train/bus station because I had another flixbus to catch to Venice, and I didn't want to be late for that. As I walked, I decided I was peckish, so stopped to buy a nice large pizza on the way back, which only cost 2 euros. Ay caramba for the things that matter!
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| That dirty pile on the ground was snow, and it was my first snow of the trip so I was excited and took pictures |
As I do, I arrived at the bus station about an hour early, so I stopped to look at the covered market next to the station, which turned out to be a chocolate festival. I'm not a monster, so I like chocolate, and I got myself what was probably the best mug of hot chocolate I've ever had in an entire lifetime of chocolate - it was actually, molten hot chocolatey goodness in a cup. It's what I imagine Willy Wonka's chocolate river to taste like. Of course no one does food - any sort of food - like the Italians do. Apparently in Italy, a chocolate festival means enjoying the "food of the gods" in endless variations.
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| For posterity's sake, the bus station |
More to come.
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