A load of Bologna

17

The great thing about the Olympics is that it brings people together. But, the bad thing about the Olympics is that all of the hotels decide to hike their prices up. That means that it makes it expensive to stay in the host city and just sightsee before or after any events you are attending. We decided that we wanted to spend more time in Italy than just the two nights we had scheduled for the events that we had tickets for. To try and get the best of both worlds, decided to start our trip with two nights in Bologna.

Located just an hour or so away from Milan by train, Bologna felt like the perfect city in which to start our trip. Plus, who can resist the home of one of Italy’s most famous exports – Bolognese!

Now, I must confess, I didn’t know that much about Bologna before we visited, but we love Italy and all things Italian (we honeymooned in Italy in 2019) and so I was excited to explore a new city.

We had a British Airways Companion voucher that was due to expire in March and so we booked ourselves business class flights to Bologna – starting our holiday with a tiny bit more luxury than economy on short haul airlines usually allows. Our flight was an early morning one – 8.40am so we chose to stay the night before at a hotel near Heathrow – the Premier Inn near Terminal 5 – just two stops away on a bus (the 423) that ran every 20 minutes. So, I got home from work, we had dinner and then made our way over to the hotel where we checked in just in time to watch the final six male figure skaters do their short programmes (very important as one of our Olympic events was to be the men’s free skate). We also had a room that overlooked Heathrow and so got to watch the planes take off and land – surprisingly thrilling, even as an adult. For £52 for the room for the night, it was well worth the money to be right near the airport as it made our journey to the airport super easy.

The next morning we hopped on the bus to Heathrow and wizzed through security (helped by the early morning flight and having business class tickets so we fast-tracked through). We found ourselves seats in the North Lounge (busy, even though it was early and the tracker said it was at 47% capacity) and settled down with a bit of breakfast.

Our flight was super quick and smooth. Being a short-haul European flight, business class offered the same seats as economy but with a guaranteed middle seat between you and the next person. We also got a choice of breakfast – an omelette or a full English, or the option of just going for a croissant and yoghurt. We went with the latter and for drinks, requested a little Buck’s Fizz each to celebrate going away – bubbles make it special!

We zipped through Bologna airport, which is tiny and into a taxi and the city. We were able to get into our room at Ariam Guesthouse early, which was great. I’d highly recommend Ariam Guesthouse, it’s only small (just a handful of rooms) but it’s right in the city centre, super quiet and had everything we needed for our two night stay. Although we didn’t use it, there’s a coffee shop right downstairs that sells pastries for breakfast and we were just minutes from everything.

I didn’t really have a plan for what to do in Bologna as such. We had basically a day and a half there – we arrived midday on day one, had a fully day two in Bologna and then had a 10.30 train out of Bologna on day three, so, not long.

As such, the plan was really just to wander, have great food and drink and to take things as they came, seeing anything that interested us. I was gutted though to see that we had just missed an exhibition on Georges Simenon after our successful visit to the Oxford exhibition on John Le Carré, as my husband is a big fan of the Maigret books. I had done some research though and had pinned a few places to Google Maps to help with remembering what might be of interest and where might be good to eat and drink. We certainly didn’t get to all of them, but maybe we’ll return one day.

Once we’d checked in and ditched our bags, we headed out into the city to get our bearings (and some lunch).

Bologna is a city of porticos, which are essentially covered walkways that line pretty much every street in the city centre, held up by old stone arches. Apparently Bologna has something like 40 kilometres of them. Bologna is also home to the oldest university in Europe, which gives it this young, lived-in energy, even in winter.

Obviously the main draw of Bologna was the food. In addition to Bolognese, mortadella is also from here, and tortellini – tiny little stuffed pasta parcels apparently modelled on the navel of the goddess Venus.

Having said that Bologna is famous for its food, I must admit that our first lunch was a Roman one… sorry Bologna but this was our first time back in Italy since our honeymoon and when we passed Osteria da Fortunata, we couldn’t resist popping in for hearty bowls of pasta and fishbowl wine glasses of Cesanese.

We spent the afternoon exploring the streets of Bologna.

When searching the internet for the best things to do in Bologna, one thing kept popping up on Instagram, a little window onto a ‘secret’ canal (Finestrella di Via Piella – Canale di Reno). As with all instagram spots, this is one of those things that a lot is made of because it looks good online when you have someone push open the door and film it (yes, I made my husband do it with me), but in reality it’s more underwhelming in real life, not least because it has a small queue of people all wanting to do the same thing. And the canal isn’t secret, if you cross the road you can see it from there or from the other end of the canal. Missable? Yes, especially if you were there in the height of tourist season, but perfectly doable in the off-season as a fun little diversion (and for the ‘gram).

The window onto the canal is apparently one of Bologna’s seven ‘secrets’.

Another of the seven secrets is this inscription on the underside of a portico – Canabis Protectio – hemp is protection.

The most fun ‘secret’ to find though is the optical illusion where if you stand in a particular place Neptune on top of the fountain seems rather more well-endowed than he is as his outstretched hand looks rather phallic. The best place to see the optical illusion from is the steps to the library.

Bologna by night is very pretty. At least when we went (I’m not sure if they are permanent or not), they had two streets that were strung with lyrics from songs. One from a song by Luca Carboni – Bologna è una regola, and one with the lyrics from Imagine by John Lennon. There were also a handful of other lights up in the shape of things like doves, moon and stars etc. I wish we did more of this sort of thing in the UK, it really does transform streets after dark. In addition to the fact that Italian shops (and European shops in general) tend to stay open later than those here, it does make for more of a lively after-work evening culture.

After an early evening walk, we headed to a nearby supermarket to stock up on a few snacks in lieu of dinner. Aside from the fact we’d gone big on lunch, we wanted to watch the Olympics Ice Dance Free Skate event. We’d watched the Netflix documentary Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing right before the Olympics started and saw the Short programme before we left for Italy, so we had to watch the Free Skate. We spent the evening happily chilling in our room, watching TV, snacking on a mixture of charcuterie, biscuits and crisps, and cheering on the athletes.

The next morning we woke up to find that the city was shrouded in mist. Before we left England, the weather forecast had suggested it would rain pretty much all day every single day we were in Italy, so we were prepared for not great weather. For the most part though, other than a bit of drizzle and general dampness, the rain held off. And, being a city of porticos, it was actually pretty easy to stay dry most of the time when we were out and about.

For lunch, we stopped at Zerocinquantuno for tigelle – small round flatbreads that you can either fill yourself or order pre-filled. We went for a variety of pre-filled tigelle – meat for me, vegetarian and fish-based for my pescatarian husband – together with pignoletto, a local sparkling white wine, similar to prosecco but lighter and perfect with lunch.

We spent the day, wandering the streets and doing a bit of shopping – we picked up an Italian version of Matilda for our niece who has been learning Italian via Duolingo. We figured that it might be the perfect book to pick, pitched at the right age, anchored by the illustrations and the sort of thing you can dip into and see what you recognise of the language in a familiar story.

We also picked up a few things for us to remember our trip to Bologna by. I bought what is possibly the best souvenir from Bologna, a little leather tortellino keyring handmade from a shop called Double Trouble that makes clothes and also a variety of leather goods. The tortellini come in a variety of colours and in two sizes (I got the large). Whilst I was drawn to the metallic ones, who could resist the yellow pasta colour one? They also run workshops where you can make your own keyring or bag!

We also picked up a piece of art from La Tarlatana, a small shop and workshop selling etching and aquatint engravings. The owner has a wonderful selection that you can browse in both books and on the walls. Many of them are Bologna-themed, often with a touch of whimsy. All are beautiful and the owner helpfully offered a stiff cardboard cover with handle to help keep our chosen print flat and safe. Now we just have to find a frame for it.

After an afternoon of exploration and a bit of Olympics-watching, we went for a little evening pre-prandial drink at a bar called Bar Senza Nome (nameless bar). Aside from being pretty unique in not having much indication from the outside that it is either a bar, or that it was open, the bar is owned and run by people who are deaf. Now, our sign language is about on a par with our Italian (shamefully poor) but opposite the bar is a wall of tickets that both have the drinks written in English and with a picture on showing what the Italian sign language sign(s) for the drink is. We had a great Aperol spritz, negroni and a beer chaser. It was a lovely place with relaxed vibe and definitely the sort of place that we’d have revisited had we been in Bologna longer.

For dinner, I was looking for somewhere that offered vegetarian tortellini/tortelloni so that both my husband and I could both try them, and Ristorante Oberdan da Mario fit the bill. We ate like kings and rolled home to watch the evening’s Olympic events before turning in for the night.

The next morning we set off early for the train station and our train to Milan. On our honeymoon in 2019 we had visited a number of different cities in Italy, travelling between each of them by train. We found Italian trains to be efficient, pretty reasonably priced (compared to English trains anyway) and very comfortable. The train from Bologna to Milan was no different. It takes just one hour 10 minutes and for Super Economy cost just EUR 72. You could easily day trip between the two cities, but as it was, we were going to be staying in Milan and so Milan and the excitement of the Olympics, the drama of the events, and the opportunity to find Tina the mascot, beckoned!