Italy Part 4: The final leg of Italy. When planning this leg of the trip, we decided to homebase in Bologna in order to explore the surrounding region. At the time of planning, we had figured we could take the train each day to the smaller towns we wanted to explore and then return each night. That plan sounded great until a one way taxi ride in Italy was $25.00 no matter how far the ride. So, on the train ride from Rome to Bologna, we decided to look into renting a car. The rental cars were inexpensive in Bologna so we decided the car was the best way to explore. We planned to pick up the car on Wednesday on our way out of town so on Tuesday, we just explored downtown Bologna. We seem to have a way of always hitting places on holidays and true to form, Tuesday was the St. Petronis holiday in Bologna. Luckily, most stores and restaurants were open as were the cathedrals (of course!). We enjoyed our walk around town and voted Bologna the best gelato in the country. On Wednesday, we had a tour of a Parmigiano Reggiano farm in Parma, Italy at 10:30am followed by lunch. We asked our Airbnb hostess to reserve a taxi for us first thing in the morning. She said the taxi company would not allow her to reserve a taxi. So, at 7:45am, we set out to find a taxi to take us to the airport to pick up our rental car. The airport was about a 15 minute drive from our apartment. We easily found a taxi stand and waited. And waited. No taxi. We started walking and found another taxi stand and another….nothing. We stopped by a luxury hotel and the doorman tried to get us a taxi. Nothing. We finally gave up and walked to the train station to get a taxi. We could have taken a train to the airport but….the train was closed for the week for repairs. We waited in a very long taxi line and finally made it to the airport. By this time, it was 10:30. Hmmmm, not going to make the tour that was still an hour’s drive. We went to the rental car area of the airport to be told that our rental car company was not onsite (even though they said they were). So, we had to walk down the street and wait for the shuttle bus that would come “in 10 minutes”. After 15 minutes, I called the company and he said, “It will be there in 10 minutes”. Once we finally arrived at the Sur Price car rental company, the guy would not rent us a car because we did not have an international driver’s license! When Bill told them we had never needed one in ANY country, he said, “Well, I can’t give you a car.” He did not give us a refund either so Bill had to call Visa to get it canceled! After waiting another 15 minutes for the return shuttle, we went into the airport rental center and rented a car without issue. It was now 11:20am. I called the Parma farm and they said we could still make it for lunch. So, with extreme frustration and fully exhausted, we headed out to Parma. We had a lovely lunch with a much needed glass of wine. After lunch, we explored Parma which was a town stuck in the middle for lack of a better explanation. It’s old stuff was not old enough to hold interest and it’s new stuff was not new enough to be cool. Both of us voted that we just wanted to head back to the Airbnb and crash for a quiet night. Sigh….alas, driving in a walled city like Bologna to find a small parking garage was not an easy task. Every turn we took ended up being a one way street and then the streets would get narrower and narrower causing us to stop and turn around. After an hour of playing this game, Bill finally just went the wrong way down a one way street to get us to the garage. Needless to say, this day was our roughest one yet and we hope not to have a repeat! Thursday’s event was the entire reason for our visit to this area….a tour of the Maserati Factory! As we headed out of Bologna to Modena, we took a wrong turn and ended up going the wrong way on the autostrada. Getting off the autostrada was an impossible task so again, we rode 10 minutes in the wrong direction. We are not used to having so many direction issues and we have decided the engineers of Bologna’s highways were on drugs. Our Maserati tour was in the afternoon so on the way, we stopped at a car museum that was literally on a farm. The man had several dozen classic cars, tractors, bicycles and motorcycles on his farm. He did not charge admission and just asked for donations. It was an amazing collection and we enjoyed visiting the cows as well. We made it to the Maserati tour an hour ahead of schedule because we were not taking any chances! The Maserati Factory was so clean we could have eaten off the floor. We got to see the workers assemble each part of the car like a Lego kit which was really cool. We were surprised by the lack of machines in the plant but the tour guide explained that most of the parts were manufactured elsewhere and the cars were just assembled at this plant. The plant only makes 6 cars per day! No wonder they cost so much! Our final day in Italy started with a tour at the Gelato Museum! The company who housed the museum did not actually make gelato but made the machines that make gelato. It was an interesting hour and we laughed when we discovered that the Medicis had once again played a major role in yet another Italian staple. Gotta love those Medicis! After gelato, we headed to the Ducati Factory for a tour. This factory was a bit more involved than the Maserati factory because they did a lot more assembly of the motorcycles onsite. They produced around 150 motorcycles per day so it was a lot more action than Maserati! I did not expect to like the motorcycle tour but it ended up being my favorite! All in all, our trip through Italy has been an amazing journey. Incredible food, nice people and amazing history. Now that we are full of enough carbs to last us a few months, we are now leaving tomorrow for Montenegro and Croatia….the land of meat! Ratings for Bologna: Overall: 7.5 Points of interest: 8 Ease of communication: 8 (most people spoke English thank goodness!) Ease of transportation: 2 Friendly people: 8 Food: 8 Cost of living: 7 Weather: 10 Bill’s favorite thing: Maserati and Ducati tour Sally’s favorite thing: Ducati tour Will do my best with picture upload! Internet at our airport hotel is poor….
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Italy Part 3: Rome. The Eternal City….the city of eternal aching feet! The main thing I remembered about Rome from 30 years ago was aching feet and it did not take long to relive that memory. There was so much to do in Rome and we hated to miss anything so walking was a must. Our first day, we had tickets to the Vatican late in the day so we decided to go visit a huge park near our hotel that had a villa with gardens. We are going to stop trying to do gardens on this trip because we are cursed! The bus dropped us at the entrance of the park which was around 500 acres in size. The villa was at least 499 acres from where we started. We walked and walked and arrived to find the villa closed (it appeared to have been closed for quite a while) and the gardens locked. After some more walking, we managed to escape the park and walked over to Sant Angelo’s Castle which sat right on the river. The castle was built by Hadrian over 2000 years ago and looks like it will stand another 2000 years without issue. It had been added onto throughout the years and had incredible views of St. Peter’s square and the Tiber river. We then headed over to the Vatican for our museum tour. We started in St. Peter’s square and were then routed all the way around to the back of the Vatican for the museum entrance. On my previous visit, I remember being angry at the amount of gold and wealth that was in the Vatican while so many of their parishioners lived in poverty around the world. Evidently I was not the only one because NONE of the gold was displayed anymore in the main museum. The museum was much fancier now but I can’t say it was better. We were herded through each room with a lot of other people (even though the visits were ‘timed’ to decrease crowd size) and we spent most of our time trying to get ahead of large tour groups. Once in the Sistine Chapel, we were jammed in like sardines. We were supposed to be “silent” and not take photos. To us, it seemed like the crowd was following the rules but a worker kept screaming “Silenzia” and “No photos” over the loudspeaker which was quite ironic. After fighting our way out of the mayhem, we waited in a short line to see the Basilica which was a highlight of the tour. Sunday was Don’t Know What That Building Is Tour 2022. We started at the Trevi Fountain along with everyone else in Rome and then made our way over to the Vicus Caprarious for our scheduled tour. The Vicus was an underground archeological site that looked really cool online. Not so much in person. It was an underground cistern and it took us about 5 minutes to complete our tour. We only paid $4.00 each for the tour and we both felt we overpaid. The rest of the day we spent meandering through the streets of Rome looking at very large buildings and cathedrals. I can’t tell you the names of any of them except the Pantheon but they were really cool! Lol! We came across one cathedral that had the most amazing ceiling painting that we have seen (see picture). It looked like you were just heading straight into heaven! We went to a small museum that was free and saw a few nice paintings. It was known for a tunnel that was an optical illusion based on a math equation by Borromini. The tunnel appeared to be very long and a statue at the end appeared to be very large. In reality, it was none of these things (see pics to fully appreciate). While we were at the museum, an elderly employee came to me and said, “I love America! Better than Rome!” Then, he started singing, “Sunday, Monday, Happy Days!” and “Funkytown”. We figured he learned all his English from watching sitcoms from the 70s and listening to 80s music. He just kept repeating these two things until we made our escape. Rome was full of characters! We noticed as we wandered that we have not seen any stray cats or dogs in all of Italy. We found that odd. Given the pandemic shutdowns, we are quite suspicious that there are no cats, no dogs and no pigeons either….hmmmm…… Our final day in Rome was a walk into history as we explored Palatine Hill, the Forum and the Colosseum. We arrived early and had Palatine Hill almost to ourselves but by the time our allotted time slot at the Colosseum arrived, the tour groups had caught up to us. We finished the day with a trip to see the largest building in Rome, the Palazzo Venezia. I cannot begin to describe the size of the structure so I will not try. Just put it on your bucket list! We head out of Rome in the morning to spend a few days in and around Bologna. We have quite a few surprises for you on the next leg so we look forward to sharing them with you in a few days! Ratings for Rome: Overall: 8 Points of interest: 8 Ease of communication: 8 (most people spoke English thank goodness!) Ease of transportation: 6 Friendly people: 6 Food: 7 Cost of living: 6 Weather: 10 Bill’s favorite thing: Sant Angelo Sally’s favorite thing: Sant Angelo |
AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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