April 5

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This morning we stopped in the church nearest to our apt, as it was open.  It is big (much bigger than St. Mark's in Venice).  It has a similar dome-y ceiling/roof, but this one was made mostly of brick, and the ceiling was white rather than gold mosaic like St. Mark's.   I'd never seen a big church with brick piers (rather than stone piers) holding up the roof.  I don't know if it's the generally gloomy weather -- we are finding that Italian churches are very dark inside.  I didn't notice that in France (where we had much more sunshine, so maybe that's the difference).  We were clear that at least some parts of this church were quite new (at least some of the stained glass).  My daughter says she read that a lot of Bologna was destroyed in WWII.

It's humbling, to come from a country where it's been such a long time since large areas of cities were turned into rubble, when you visit a place that's been ruined so much more recently.........

Then we headed back down toward the main square.  We were determined to find postcards.  We had coffee and a pastry downtown.  Citrus in desserts is growing on me.  I don't supposed I'll ever prefer it to chocolate, but it is yummy....

We did succeed in finding postcards!  So odd, when they were EVERYWHERE in Venice, to find them so rare in Bologna.  There were several things (towers, churches) that were featured on lots of postcards, which are right in that downtown area, so we set out to find the towers and churches, so we could send postcards of things we'd actually seen.........

We had lunch in a much fancier restaurant than yesterday, but I liked yesterday's bean soup better than today's tortolini in brodo (in broth, that is).  Perhaps that's because I love fagioli better than carne (my tortolini were stuffed with beef and pork).....

The Johns Hopkins University has a presence here in Bologna, and we found it today.  They were having some sort of conference in the building, so they wouldn't let us walk around (we were hoping for a bookstore with sweatshirts that say Hopkins Bologna or something of the sort), but at least they let us use the bathroom.  (Just like the American Church in Paris let us use theirs.  Hooray for the USA and decent and available bathrooms!)

It rained today, after two dry days in Bologna.  I think of Italy as being a dry, rather than a wet country, but we have had a LOT of wet weather.  Bologna has a lot of walkways under the front edges of buildings, so you don't get as wet on a rainy day in Bologna as you do in Venice.

Today we bought eggs and milk as well as strawberries, and made French toast (with strawberries) for supper.  Mmmmmmm.  I believe that's the first time I've broken an egg outside the USA, and perhaps it's the first time this kitchen has ever had French toast made in it.

We went in a dollar store yesterday to look for a dishtowel.  The one (1) in the apt is not apparently very clean.......  Today we went back there and picked up one of the dollar (well, ok, 1 euro) bread knives we'd seen yesterday.  (Our Venice apt was much better furnished for cooking than this one!)  We'll leave the knife in our apt in Florence when we are done there.  It helped, making French toast, to have a bread knife!

Tomorrow we'll look at some more touristy stuff, and perhaps do a bit of shopping.

Sunday we pick up a rental car.  Next, after Bologna, on our agenda is visiting several producers of specialty foods -- olive oil, pasta, Parmesan cheese......

Buona notte!


In order to facilitate chronological traversal of these posts, here is a link to the next post.

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