Bologna, Italy

Whilst we lived in London, finding the inspiration (and time) to blog was driven by the need to record down all the memories of cultural sites visited that were so intriguingly different to what we had grown up with in Melbourne.
But now at the cusp of our 5 month anniversary of returning to Australia, although we have only managed a handful of posts in this time-frame - a resurrection of this hobby is now underway and (fingers crossed) we will complete the full set of posts on our 5 month holiday before 2016 ends. This next post leans heavily to one of our favourite travel pastimes - eating cured meats and drinking wine.


Visiting Bologna...again
There are about a dozen cities in Europe that we visited more than once during our time in London. There were usually a couple of reasons for this:

1) Convenience of travel connections to regional cities
Paris and Brussels became our landing zone for trips around France and Belgium. We made it to Paris at least 8 times on route to Reims, Tours and Strasbourg. Many happy memories were made in conjunction with the excellent customer service at the duty free shop in Gare du Nord where staff assisted with storing  cheese and wine in the fridge and uncorking it for use as a 'traveller' on the train journey back to St Pancras.

2. Food 
When Mei needed to sort out a city to spend her birthday, the selection criteria was focused on gastronomic experiences. That put the usual suspect cities of France, Spain and Italy on the radar. But having just returned from Madrid in May with Mei's parents; and a short weekend in Paris in June with Olie's family; it was timely to head back to Italy.

And in Italy - there was Bologna. It was also convenient that flights to this city could be purchased completely on Avios (so essentially free) and it made sense based on our direction of onward travel to the Balkans.

London Gatwick to London Heathrow
In the last blog post, we left Trondheim on the 10th of August and headed back to London for an overnight 'pit-stop'. Our inbound flight landed at Gatwick Airport in the evening around 8pm and our outbound flight to Bologna was scheduled for 8:30am from Heathrow Airport. As it didn't make sense to find a hotel room in the center of London, we booked an airport hotel for the layover.

* TRAVEL TIP* - When staying at the airport, align the hotel terminal with your arrival or departure terminal.

This piece of advice might seem like common sense, but we failed to take it into account and ended up paying a small unnecessary amount of pounds for our ignorance. It all started with the timing of our arrival back in London coinciding with a Tube Strike. This convinced us to avoid the 'usual' route back from London Gatwick Airport using the rail service to London Bridge (and then connect to the Piccadilly Line for Heathrow). Instead we booked a ticket on the National Express coach that connects most of London's Airports together. The journey took over an hour but unfortunately for us, it dropped us off at a Terminal that was not aligned to where our hotel (Renaissance Hotel) was located. We then had to catch a taxi (which felt like it took the most scenic route around the Heathrow estate) to the hotel. Then the next morning, we had to pay for a shuttle bus back to our departing Terminal for our flight.

Arrival in Bologna
The advantage of returning to a city previously visited, is that you already know the transport options (shuttle bus) to the historic center, the location of the train station and the best place to find cured meats and gelati in the laneways surrounding the medieval brick towers that once dominated the skyline.

One of the remaining medieval towers in Bologna

We booked ourselves back into the Millennhotel, nearby the ancient walls of the Old Town. It was located close to the train station (as we were catching a train to Ravenna the next day) and a short walk to the central square (Piazza Maggiore). The Duomo (main church) - Basilica of San Petronio had finished renovating and was no longer covered by the scaffolding we had seen on our last visit.

Basilica of San Petronio

Quadrilatero 
From past experience we knew that the Quadrilatero (Old Market) area had a food court (Mercato di Mezzo) where we could start our eating experience. Ordering seafood and wine for starters - it was sad to realise that our European food experiences would be coming to an end soon.

Getting comfortable at the wine bar

Seafood lunch

Cornucopia of cured meats
We then headed to A.F Tamburini (food store) for a solid dose of mortadella and parma ham, before turning the corner to Gelateria Gianni for an excellent serve of gelati as we walked through the Porticoes lining the streets of the University District.

We had originally intended to walk the entire 4km (666 arch) route to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, but the heat got the better of us and we ended up exploring the Palazzo Pepoli - Museo della Storia di Bologna (Museum of the History of Bologna).

Afterwards we finished the night off with an aperitivo (drinks with snacks) sitting outside of Caffe Zamboni before finding a place that served traditional ragu alla bolognese for dinner.

Aperitivo hour

Later that evening, we took a walk along Via Zamboni - the beautiful red brick portico lined street near the University.

Graffiti under the porticoes

Good night Bologna

Next blog post:

Ravenna, Italy

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