Bologna

Last minute weekend in Bologna with Dan!

Days at a Glance

Date	Day at a Glance
Friday 31Jan25	Arrival, elaborate dinner
Saturday 01Feb25	Exploring Bologna, elaborate dinner
Sunday 02Feb25	Exploring Ravenna, elaborate dinner
Monday 03Feb25	Long walk to Santuario della Madonna di San Luca, fly home

High-Low-Hero-Chow/Ciao*

	Ben	Maggie	Dan
High	Unfortunately way too	Slow-paced dinners	Dinner talks with Ben and Maggie and 1500 year old churches of Ravenna
Low	Woman falling on Maggie on the monorail/roller coaster from airport downtown	Trying to find an open place for lunch at 3PM	Saw ancient towers but couldn't climb any
Hero	Dad for booking a great AirBNB	Dan for picking such amazing restaurants!	Ben and Maggie for cheerfully marching around Ravenna
Chow/Ciao	Mo Mortadella Lab sandwich or late night gelato	Everything at San Pietro Trattoria	Chow-Eggplant parmagiana on Saturday night Ciao-Arcades everywhere in Bologna but no video games in sight

*A game I learned from Ben, who uses it with friends as a fun way to reflect on an experience

Journal

We were thrilled to host Dan again in Den Bosch at the end of January. As he's already visited us in the Netherlands, he wanted to go somewhere new with us on the weekend. He suggested Bologna, and we agreed, after seeing a direct, cheap RyanAir flight from Eindhoven. Dan took it from there, planning all the details. It was so lovely to be whisked away!

Friday 31Jan25

We arrived to Bologna airport around 7:30PM and took a quick tram into the city. (Emphasis on the quick, a middle aged woman almost toppled me over on one of the bumps!)

We met Dan at the AirBNB, a nice place he picked in the city center. After dropping our bags, we headed out for dinner. Dan is an expert at picking restaurants; using google maps to sniff out quality places. Unfortunately, his sense for good restaurants meant we were turned away from full restaurants at the first 3 we tried for not having a reservation. It's unclear if the restaurants were truly full, or full for Americans. While we game-planned after the third rejection, Ben called our attention to a place across the street that seemed full of local folk. After confirmation from Dan that the google reviews were acceptable (thank God!), we were seated at a slightly less fancy Italian place. Luckily, the food was delicious: world's largest house salad, seafood pasta, a stinky anchovy pizza, and pasta Bolognese (in Bologna! how fun!), all with the house red. It was lovely to sit and enjoy a slow paced dinner.

We walked around a bit after dinner, enjoying the atmosphere of people out enjoying themselves within the arcades. We ended the night at a gelato place. My dad would've approved of gelato containers: shallow underground instead of piled high and exposed to air. It was delicious!

Saturday 01Feb25

After being out way past our usual bed time (home after 1AM!), we slept in. After a slow morning, we headed to a café for breakfast. Mortadella is a specialty here, and Bologna happens to be the reason why Americans call mortadella "bologna." Our café sliced the meat fresh in the back for our sandwiches, which we enjoyed with coffee.

Dan led us on a tour of Bologna. Like any Italian city, it's stuffed with old churches. Dan appreciated each one we walked by, usually having us stop and guess the age. At one point, Dan stopped us at an intersection and told us to look for the "Quadrilatero." Not understanding quite what he meant, Ben took a look at the map, and quickly realized Dan had led us to the area on the map under the "Quadrilatero" heading, signifying a general neighborhood, but not related to any particular landmark. We had a good laugh: Ben re-enacted arriving to Dan's house and asking "Where's the West End?" Fortunately, the harmless mistake had led us down charming streets.

Bologna has a particular affinity for porticoes: there's ~40 miles of them, and they are marked as a UNESCO heritage site. It felt like every street in the city center had the covered walkway. By the end of the trip, we were portico connosseirus, remarking on the cleanliness and style.

Traveling stimulates our appetite, and soon after the first café stop, Ben was hungry again. Luckily, we were in the world of mortadella sandwiches, so we popped into another café to load up. Dan gave us shit for needing "emergency sandwiches," and was appalled we went into a café without stopping to check it was the most top-rated café of the area, but somehow the sandwiches were still delicious. We got 3, to make sure we had a back-up sandwich in the backpack.

One of the weirder stops on the tour was this free museum that contained an assortment of old door knobs, old keys, little marionette statues, a few old paintings, and every now and then a modern art mini-sculpture. The most important feature: a bathroom, that the 3 of us really put through the ringer…

For our third sandwich stop of the day, we went to a casual restaurant specializing in mortadella. We walked by the original location during lunch time and the line must have been 50 people long. Now, at this smaller satellite location at 3PM, there wasn't a line, but we understood why it was so popular…this was the most delicious deli meat sandwich I have ever had. Soft bread, fresh mozarella, warm mortadella…heaven.

After a long day of walking around, Dan was feeling cold and requested we head back to the AirBNB to warm up. Ben and I relaxed in front of the TV with some tea while Dan picked out a few places for me to call to make sure we got a reservation.

We headed out for drinks before dinner, stopping by to peek at a former canal (now just a sad wet street).

"Canal" was not up to Dutch standards

We found a spot to sit in an arcade, making sure Dan was under the heater, and enjoyed our drinks. Before we headed out for the evening, Dan gave us some edibles. We blindly trusted him on the dosage…big mistake. Ben and I slowly realized we were uncomfortably high, and kept exchanging glances with each other, paranoid that nearby customers must notice. I excused myself to the bathroom, trying to act natural. My high brain could not comprehend how to flush the toilet or read the sign, pointing to a button on the wall near the toilet, and instead decided to pull the red cord that hangs low for medical emergencies, turning on the alarm. I exited almost immediately, but still had to sheepishly try and explain to the staff why the alarm was going. So embarrassing.

We moved on to the dinner restaurant, where we had the best eggplant parmesan of my life. Everything was delicious, and Dan and Ben particularly loved the tiramisu.

We made it home safely, but Ben and I both agreed that was the last time we fully trust Dan to dose our highs.

Sunday 02Feb25

We started the morning off with an hour train to Ravenna, a city Dan was interested in due to the historic importance. He regaled us with history of the Roman Empire and Vizigoths on the ride there, to fully impress upon us the significance of Ravenna.

Dan learned from yesterday that Ben and I do best with a full breakfast, so we made sure to start the day in Ravenna with a proper meal. We all shared avocado toast at a busy brunch restaurant, enjoying that we could sit outside with the heaters.

After eating, we started our mad dash from one historic church to the next, craning our necks to marvel at the mosaics, before rushing onto the next one. Dan had purchased the multi-pass, getting us access to the 5 major monuments in Ravenna. We did not stop at just 5 monuments: Dan made sure to stop into every church we passed. We joked that we were on the amazing race: if there's an old church in ravenna, we at least popped our head in. We went into so many churches that Dan started to develop a bit of snobbery, noting that the 15th century churches just weren't old enough compared to the 6th century churches. Ben and I were grateful we'd packed our emergency sandwich from yesterday.

After a full day in Ravenna, we trained back to Bologna, unloaded our stuff in the AirBNB, then headed out for dinner. Dan got us reservations at San Pietro Trattoria, and this was my favorite restaurant of the entire trip. Each dish was immaculately plated, delicious, and the restaurant owners were very attentive throughout the whole night. We ordered multiple courses, getting all the highlights: seafood, pasta Bolognese (for the third time!), and pizza. After our dessert and melon liqueur course, we realized it had been 3 hours. It was lovely to sit and enjoy delicious Italian food with Dan and Ben.

We walked home and had a call with Ben's siblings, to share about our vacation and catch up. Finally, we said goodbye to Dan, who had an early morning flight. He headed to Athens the next day, the final stop of his vacation!

Monday 03Feb25

We slept in, finished our cereal for breakfast, then headed out for a day of walking, grateful that our baggage consisted of just backpacks, thanks to RyanAir's baggage policy. We targeted the Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca, a church on a large hill with a view overlooking the city. We walked 2km to the base of the hill, then another 3km, going up stairs through the portico (the longest portico in the world!) Every now and then we'd stop and appreciate the changing view of the city.

The church itself wasn’t anything special (did I also become a church snob?), but did have bathrooms. There was a tray asking for 50 cents on the honor system, or as Ben described it, "50 cents for Catholics."

We headed back down the stairs, and realized we now needed to find lunch during siesta hour. As no restaurants were open, we did our usual grocery store lunch of fresh bread, prosciutto, and scamorza. Unfortunately this was one of the worst breads we've ever purchased, absolutely no flavor. We thought of Dan saying "everything's better in Europe" as we considered feeding the bread to the pigeons. But at least the fresh Italian oranges went down smooth.

After a long day of walking, we bussed to the airport and flew home.

Summary

It was a really lovely trip in Bologna. It's always nice to travel with friends and family, and watching Dan take in the wonder of the old churches did add some magic. It was nice to have a weekend away in Italy where I did not feel any pressure to plan or pick restaurants, but know that we'd have a nice time and eat delicious food. Dan's lovely to travel with, and it was nice to be able to catch up over the long dinners. We're both very grateful to him for booking this weekend and making it happen. What a weekend to remember!

For the Record

	Details
Arrival	RyanAir, BLQ, 8PM
Departure	RyanAir, BLQ, 18.30
AirBNB	V.le Pietro Pietramellara, 7, 40121
Sunday night dinner	San Pietro Trattoria, Via Dè Gessi, 5, 40121
Maisy	With Anna and her dog Pemba