Food, Wine and A Hike in the Italian Alps

Monday, July 11, 2016

The very end.

Just to recap our last few days and close this adventure while getting ready for the next one scheduled for February 2017.

July 4th: We explored Bologna on foot and by on and off trolley. It is a very old city and houses the first university in Europe. Home to several miles of porticos and originally towers, now only 2 left in the entire city since WWII was not kind to Bologna. It is disappointing in that graffiti mars many of the building. We continued with our walking to explore but did enjoy an early night. We have taken to hiding the air conditioner controls so when someone comes into the room to clean it is not shut off. It is a warm humid toasty 88 degrees and easy to understand why stores and businesses close from 1:30PM until 4:00PM.

July 5th: A day trip to Ravenna. There are great mosaics in the churches. We walk to the train station, only 15 minutes away (unsure who is the timer) and make the train with 2 minutes to spare. Ravenna is an hour to the south and with no map we set out to explore utilizing only the street signs. Map in hand we proceed to get lost but located all the churches, a gelato stand and even Dante's tomb. Then back to Bologna and the walk to the center of town, much improved when we have only packing and organizing to do for the trip home in 2 days. Hard to believe it has been 3 weeks.

July 6th: All of our bags with us we head for the train station (this time by private driver). We will spend the day at Lake Maggiore and Stresa. There is a bag check at the train station otherwise we would have spent the day in Milan. We take several boat rides to see some gardens. These are the first gardens of the trip. If you can believe it Dan turned down several opportunities as it was too hot.
It was a slow easy day as we will make our way to stay near the airport tonight since the flight for the US leaves at 8AM. Our last chance for gelato and pizza in Italy.

Final thoughts: 25 hours of travel time to get home. Tons of walking, stairs and sweating. My Spanish did not help in Italy, but I think I want to go back with more language skills. It was a great trip and I wouldn't have traded any of our experiences because I don't think I could have made them any better.

Ciao