Sunday, August 5, 2007

We finally arrived in Bologna around 11:30 am. Compared to the Detroit, Amsterdam & even the Norfolk airports, the Bologna airport was pretty shabby. Half of it was under construction (it needed it!) The hotel was only about 10 minutes from the airport, but the taxi driver drove like a manic! I don’t think they have speed limits here. From the airport to the hotel, the city looked pretty run down. It reminded me a lot of Norfolk on Monticello with all the construction going on. Nothing like I had pictured. Once we got to the hotel, they only had a reservation for George which seemed to put the reception desk in a bit of a panic. Not a good sign to end our already long day. The guy that showed us to our room spoke NO English AND he was new! So again, not a good sign. There was also a trick to turning the lights on in the room, which he didn’t show us & we had to go back down to the desk to get the manager. SHEESH! Apparently, the card used to open the door has to be inserted into a slot in order for the lights to stay on. Nice little tidbit of info don’t ya think? Then we find out their restaurant is closed until August 26th. So much for Plan A – eat at the hotel then try to crash for a couple of hours. We tried to get some sleep before exploring the city, but I guess we were SO tired we COULDN’T sleep (if that makes any sense). By the time we had gotten to this point, George & I had been up close to 24 hours. We were practically zombies AND we hadn’t eaten in over 12 hours. Talk about messed up systems!

Finally around 7pm Bologna time (6 hours ahead American time), we decided to find some place to eat. We asked the desk downstairs, but they spoke very little English. We were able to understand “take a right out of the hotel to the piazza”. We started off on our second adventure! We just kept walking until we got to the center of the town where the Neptune fountain (the Piazza del Nettuno) was. Quite a few people gathered there for no apparent reason other than to just hang out & talk. The temp was low to mid 80s with very low humidity . . . VERY comfortable & a good night for a walk. Overall, the temps are a lot like ours in Virginia Beach, but with low humidity (about 25% - 35%). The city was very old, but historical looking & people smoked everywhere. That was the only unpleasant thing, but if that’s the worst, I’ll take it. At least the area was starting to look a little more like what I had expected. We eventually stopped at a pizzeria, surprisingly, not very good. The pizza was a bit doughy & of course, no one spoke English. Luckily, a customer there spoke enough English to help us with our order. I was led to believe that there were quite a few English speaking people in Bologna – not the case. Luckily, I have my trusty little book, “Just Enough Italian: How to Get by and be Easily Understood”. It’s helped a bit, but BOY do I look like a tourist! Duh! Guess I am!

A few hours later, we got back to the hotel & out of sheer exhaustion, were finally able to get some sleep. George had to go to training the next morning, so we called it a night at 10:30 (Bologna time).