Petey visits Bologna and Venezia

It's been a very short week, but I'm cutting out of class early to get going on my spring break. I'm leaving tonight at midnight for a trip to Naples with the exchange student program in Bologna. I'll basically be one of the only Americans on the trip, so it should be one of the craziest experiences of my life. Hopefully I'll get the chance to check out the beach while I'm there, but there's plenty of good stuff planned, all for a ridiculously cheap price. Even though I won't know anyone, the chance to see Pompeii and Naples for so cheap was too good to pass up.

Since I don't have too much time to get a lot down on this blog, I'm going to have to rush through a lot of the sites that Pete and I saw in Bologna and Venice. The good news is I've already written a ton about both places in my blog before, so if you're still curious about Venice or Bologna you can find a lot in my earlier posts. Pete got in Thursday morning around 5 AM, and even though I had only slept for an hour I took him right to Piazza Maggiore as soon as he got off the train. It was really nice to see Bologna all lit up, but we were really the only people walking around, so it was a cool experience. We slept for a little bit, but I had a field trip for school at 11:30. Pete decided he wanted to go, and I didn't think they would let him, but I asked anyway and my professors were nice enough to let him come. All he had to do was pay for lunch. We went to a little town called Fiorlimpopoli, where there was a museum dedicated to a food author that we have been studying in class. It was a small museum, and pretty boring really, but it was attached to a restaurant and cooking school where we had lunch. Lunch was amazing. They gave us barley soup, a really great artichoke-quiche type dish, veal, and ravioli- which were much different than we eat in the U.S. It wasn't filled with cheese quite so much as it would be in America, but it was still great. Lunch was pretty fancy, and it ended up costing Pete about 30 bucks, but it was his first meal in Italy and definitely one of the best meals I've eaten since I've been here. After Fioirlimpopoli, we rode the bus to a tiny little town way out in the country called Dozza to go to an Enoteca, which is a wine house basically. It was in this cool old castle, and the manager gave us a little overview of wine in Italy. The wine there was specific to the Emilia-Romagna region, and I ended up getting a nice bottle of white wine from Bologna and a dessert wine, which is really sweet, almost like juice, but has a much lower alcohol content. It was a long day, and we didn't get back until around 7, but we still managed to go out and get a pizza at the place right behind my apartment, called Il Valerio. It's the best pizza in Bologna, I think, and Pete was really eating well while he was here. We ended up eating it on the roof of my apartment, which was a great view of the city, and we finished the wine I bought, of course. I just discovered the roof this past week, but it's definitely one of my favorite places to hang out now. We went to bed fairly early because we wanted to catch the train to Venice as early as possible in the morning.

The next morning, we got up, made some breakfast, and hopped right on the 9 o'clock train to Venice, which is definitely my favorite city in Italy. I had a lot more time to see everything I wanted to this time around. St. Mark's Basilica was open, and we were able to get right in without much of a line. The entire interior of the church is covered in gold, which is a testament to Venice's wealth from its days as the main trade center of Europe. The basilica was actually built in the 11th century as the Doge's personal church, and St. Mark is buried inside. This country is just outrageous. Afterward, we got some gelatto and just hung out right on the water for a bit, before we just walked all around the city getting lost. We found a really cool park with a hilarious statue of, don't quote me. but I think it was Alexander the Great- and he looked like he was holding a beer. I can't stress enough how amazing Venice is. If you ever go to Italy, put that right on the top of your list, almost even before Rome. It's just beautiful there. We spent an hour or two just getting lost in the city and checking out all the cool stores and canals. We also got to see the first ever coffee house in Europe, which I had just learned about last week, but we didn't go inside because a cup of coffee was something like 9 euros. I guess when you're the original coffee house you can charge whatever you want, but I'm starting to try to pay attention to my budget. We did, however, pay the 8 euros to go to the top of the tower in Piazza San Marco, and you could see everything. It was really cool, and I have some great pictures from up there if you want to check them out on my Facebook. Afterward, we just kind of hung out before catching the train at 7. I was sad to leave Venice, since I'll probably never get the chance to go back again, but with my limited time in Italy I feel like I saw enough to feel satisfied. We got back into Bologna around 9 and immediately went out to my favorite Chinese place. The lady knows me by now. I'm actually kind of a regular at a few places where the people recognize me, so that's pretty cool and it makes Bologna feel a bit more like home. After dinner, we tried to go out to a club that was like a half hour walk away outside of the city center, but we failed miserably because it was death metal night or something like that. So, we decided to just head back and go to sleep.

We woke up around 11 the next morning, and I really wanted to show Pete all of the important stuff in Bologna. Pete took his first picture of the day, slipped, and broke his camera, so he has nothing to show for his trip HAHA. It was hilarious. After that debacle, we went over to the famous two towers, and climbed the taller one. It was pretty ridiculous. It's 100 feet taller than the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, and it was built in the early 1100's. It's exactly 318 feet high, and the steps on the inside are made of 200 year old wood- which definitely would not fly in America. I'm not going to lie, I felt pretty unsafe the entire way up, but getting to the top was worth it. It gave me a whole new appreciation for Bologna, and I finally realized what a great city I'm living in because Pete was loving every second of it. The city stretches out as far as the eye can see, and it looks like a million people live here, not just 400,000. I guess Bologna has a lot of connected "suburban" towns that I never knew about. Afterward, I took Pete to get some prosciutto, which he said was one of the best things he's ever eaten, since his favorite food is ham. We toured through the important sites, including the S. Stefano's 7 churches, which was built in the 300's. It was a great day. Before Pete left, we headed out to get dinner at a little cheap, but traditional Bologna restaurant where we both got pasta, and of course more prosciutto. We spent about an hour or so just hanging out in Piazza Maggiore before Pete left at 11:30. All in all, it was definitely a great weekend, and I'm glad Pete enjoyed Italy so much. The next time I see him will be in a month in Munich for Springfest.

I have to get running to get a lot of stuff together before I leave, and I have to tutor some young kids in Italian at 6. After that, spring break here I come.