Elise really wanted to include Bologna and Modena in our Italy Itinerary. It actually worked out well. Bologna is just a 30 min train ride from Florence and is on the way to Venice. It is a big city and even bigger than Florence and is a really nice place. Modena is another 30 minutes and is less than half the size of Bologna.
Bologna is where Kobe Bryant is from and is also where Bolognese sauce was created. It is known as the foodie capital of Italy, and that is really saying something. I assumed that Bologna wasn't that cool. Elise told me the missionaries didn't really want to get called there, and everything was orange (sounds so appealing right?). But the different autumn tones of the buildings were absolutely beautiful! And apparently the reason the missionaries don't want to go there is because there aren't a lot of places to go on P-Day because of how their zones are set up. So nothing to do with the actual city. Everything was so nice. I wished I had three more days at least just to eat and shop.
The city has miles and miles of these beautiful porticoes that have been designated a Unesco World Heritage Site. Monet went on a long run and was so excited when she came back, because of how incredibly beautiful it all was!
Also its a very interesting place! The oldest university in the world is the University of Bologna, founded in 1088. Including a super cool library. And the Duomo is cool too. Elise used to call it the "ugly duomo" and I was slightly worried that was an offensive thing to say. But actually, it is referred to as the ugly duomo. It is ugly on purpose. The outside was really beautiful and it was bigger than the Vatican duomo. So the pope ordered it to not be completed with the marble facade that was intended and it was left half finished with ugly brown bricks on the top. Its actually even more cool to me now. And I loved the history of it. Inside it is really stunning.
The boys decided the Lamborghini or Ferrari museum sounded amazing. But we were limited to the Ferrari museum because we were not able to rent a car.
So we took a train to Modena and luckily there were a bunch of electric scooters at the train station and we really loved scootering around Modena! Especially since we had a lot of runaround with no luck on the car rental in Bologna. I can't even begin to describe how fun all the scootering was. We had a blast.
Anyway, the Ferrari museum was super cool. Part of the museum is the original workshop of Enzo Ferrari. It was cool to read about the incredible attention to detail that is preserved in the Ferrari brand. Miles was teaching us all about the engine parts, etc. And we thought the history of the Ferrari and Lamborghini roots were interesting! Apparently they were friends at one point. And became rivals. I think this was especially fun for Miles after just returning from the F1 in Monaco.
We had some tasty Bloom gelato too! So good! It was such a quiet city and a real change of pace from all the touristy places we'd been.
It was really neat to see these two cities where Elise spent 7 months, mostly in quarantine! I'm glad I trusted her to make sure we included these two cities in our itinerary.
It really is hard to capture how beautiful the city is!
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| So many cute shops all closed for Farragosto. Reminder not to go to Italy in August if you can help it. |
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| Isn't this a pretty street? I love the cobblestones and the different colors. And it shows how really nice everything is finished here and how clean it is. |
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| My favorite picture of the day. Soren and Miles. This little duo is pretty cute. Miles works extra hard to bond with his brother and I don't know if Soren even realizes how lucky he is. |
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| People are getting these girls confused all the time. They are looking more and more alike! |
