speaker-0 (00:00)
Welcome back to the Sunshine Travelers podcast. If you're new here, Melissa and I are currently in the middle of what we're calling our three month retirement launch trip
And today's episode comes from a place that was never actually on our list to begin with. It's Bologna. And we ended up there because we needed a logical step between Morocco and our walking trip in Tuscany with Macs Adventure. It made sense geographically. There were nonstop flights from Fez to Bologna. So it made it a very easy decision for us. And honestly, we thought this would be kind of a reset stop.
for us. We could do some laundry, we could catch up on some work that we needed to do, and we could get ready for our walking trip in Tuscany. Fortunately though, that is not what happened. Bologna turned into one of the most unexpectedly enjoyable stops on this entire trip, and it's one that we've been talking about ever since. So today we're walking you through what surprised us, what we loved, what we almost
skipped and why this is a city you should absolutely consider adding to your itinerary. We're talking canals hidden by a window, a 17th century anatomy theater, and the longest portico in the world. And yes, a lot of food.
Speaker 2 (01:34)
We're Scott and Melissa, The Sunshine Travelers.
Speaker 1 (01:37)
We're all about exploring the world and sharing the journey with you. Whether you're a seasoned traveler, dreaming of your next adventure, or just here for the stories.
Speaker 2 (01:45)
No matter where you are on your travel journey, we've got first-hand experiences, tips, and plenty of inspiration from some of the most amazing places on Earth.
Speaker 1 (01:54)
So buckle up and get ready to travel with us.
speaker-0 (02:04)
So Melissa, this one was interesting to me because Bologna wasn't something that we really planned at all. I had looked up a few things a couple of weeks before the trip just so that we would have an idea, but this was purely a logistic stop for us. We needed somewhere between Morocco and Tuscany and it just so happened to line up. And I think because of that, we went in with almost no
that's kind of rare for somewhere you're going to go and spend four days in.
speaker-1 (02:38)
So I actually think that is the thing that made it work so well for us is that we didn't have a checklist. We didn't feel like we had to see everything. And honestly, going into it, there wasn't really anything except for, maybe just the towers. they have their own leaning towers. They don't look like the leaning tower of Pisa. But it let us really experience the city really just for more of a walking around and a curiosity
perspective, we then started wanting to see more of it. And asking, I guess a little bit, okay, what else are we missing? Because this is really way cooler than we thought it was gonna be. And I did wanna add that while we...
did want to rest and do some things, it also gave us a chance to do that. We never felt like we need to get up at 8 a.m. and go see this place before it has just masses of crowds. A couple of mornings, I think it was raining and we literally did just sleep in. We had a kitchen, we cooked in a little bit more, even though we still enjoyed a lot of good food. So it really was a good place for us to do both.
speaker-0 (03:42)
think to me it felt like a real lived in city. Not something that was built around some tourism. And don't get us wrong, there are plenty of tourists in Bologna, but we felt that the tourists and the locals kind of coexisted better than some of the other large cities that we've visited in Italy as well. And I think that's a good place to start because before we get into specific things to do, Bologna just has a very different
than a lot of the places people typically go in Italy
And I want to start out just talking a little bit about kind of how Bologna feels. There's three nicknames that Bologna has been given. La Grossa the fat one for the food. La Dotta the learned one, home of the oldest university in the world in Bologna, and La Rossa
The red one, and not for the wine, but for the rooftops.
speaker-1 (04:41)
But I think really what stood out to us that Bologna felt like a real city, a place where people live.
not overly polished, but not a tourist place where just some people live or as we've talked to other people, where even the locals want to escape the city as fast as they can. It wasn't like that. People live here, they work here, they shop here. There was a huge mix between
local shops, which we've seen in Spain and Italy where you'll have an eyeglasses shop and a shoe store and they're very local. And then the chain type stores that lots of people like to go to. They had those as well, McDonald's, Starbucks, things like that.
and then those people are the ones that are sitting next to you at dinner or at a cafe or in the piazza having the aperitivo. They're not just escaping to just their neighborhood because I felt like the whole city was their neighborhood.
And of course, coming off of our very busy schedule in Morocco and then heading to Tuscany where we would be hiking every day and having a lot of things that we wanted to see, it really was exactly the kind of, I don't know, breath, reset that we really didn't realize that we needed and then how much of Bologna was going to be that for us.
And so I will say that here's, guess, how it's just so different from places like Rome. I didn't feel like, or I will say Florence or Amalfi or even some places that we went to in Spain that where parts of it feel very tourist centered, maybe Rhonda, for example.
is that it's not just, I guess, tons of tourist shops though. There are plenty of shops and there are probably some of the places where you could get magnets or this and that that said Bologna, but it just wasn't like overwhelming the places that we were anyway.
speaker-0 (06:41)
Yeah, I mean, there weren't limoncello stores on every corner. there wasn't a dozen magnet shops walking down the street.
The stores that were there were the kind of stores that people would go in and shop as a part of every day. Obviously there were some shops that were more geared towards tourists, but that wasn't the feel that you got from Bologna.
speaker-1 (07:05)
things that we quickly discovered and then we had to do some research on it was all of the porticoes. There are covered walkways that line almost every street in the historic center and there they are mean so you really could enjoy Bologna rain or shine. Now we were very fortunate rained in the mornings and that would clear up but
What we learned is there are about 60 kilometers of covered porticoes all around the city. Part of that system is recognized by UNESCO. Not all of Bologna's porticoes are UNESCO. It's actually 12 specific sections across the city that represent how they evolved over time. Now, the one most people experience and the one that we absolutely loved was the San Luca portico, which is also part of that designation. So the porticoes, and you'll notice them right away.
Like if you're in that main downtown area, you're just gonna see it. You're gonna start seeing them everywhere. They allow you to walk through shade almost anywhere. Like I said, it doesn't matter if it rains. It doesn't matter if it's sunny. And I think that really changes how you experience the city because you could experience it rain or shine. In a lot of places, that's a whole lot harder because then you have the cobblestone streets or the stripperly rock streets. And if it's raining, people have to kind of disappear.
speaker-0 (08:21)
Yeah,
you said that you noticed them immediately, but actually I didn't. I think we walked under some of the porticoes without really looking up, and paying attention. It just felt like we were walking under, a covered walkway, if you will. But then you look up and you see these arches, just...
going down the street and it's these magnificent arches that are underneath those porticoes and make up that covered walkway that you're walking through.
So Bologna is also known for its towers. And historically, there was over 100 of those towers, which is hard to even picture.
the most famous ones are the Le Du Torri, the two towers. Most people want to go and climb these towers.
Both of them are currently closed. One of them I think is permanently closed because it's leaned too much. But the other one, Tori Degli-Sinelli, it's the tall one with about 500 steps.
And what we didn't know at first is that these towers are actually leaning as well. Someone told us that the Tower leans almost at a 1.3 degree slope. And to give you an idea, the Tower of Pisa is four degrees.
So it's not quite as obvious, but it is definitely an obvious slope that it's on.
speaker-1 (09:47)
And so once we were in Bologna and we started saying, okay, walking around, what are some things that we want to do? And I actually started looking that up about the towers and that's when we learned that one of them's closed and they're trying to renovate it so that people can maybe eventually go back up in it. But Scott, without even really looking stuff up, we were in that main plaza, which is the Piazza
which
has the cathedral, it's actually a huge plaza. And you saw a clock tower and some people that were climbing up on that clock tower and you were like, hey, what is that? Let's go see if we can actually check that out.
speaker-0 (10:32)
Yeah, and I'd actually argue that it turned out to be the better experience. It's in the Torah del Horologio, which is part of Palazzo da Curcio. So let me say that again. Palazzo da Curcio.
and you walk through these historic rooms on the way up. they talk about it, there's a bunch of steps to get there, but it's actually like this ramp that you walk up and along the way you go through like this great hall. And so these historic rooms you go through, you learn a little bit about the history of the tower.
as you're going through there. And then when you get up to the top floor, that's where you've got to now show your ticket to get into the clock tower. I would say that these are timed tickets. So you can't just show up and go. You do have to have a timed ticket to get up in there. But when you get there,
you're up above the crowds and you get some amazing pictures from the vantage point. I mean, you can see a 360 degree panoramic view of Bologna from up there.
speaker-1 (11:46)
Yeah, it's actually on two different levels. So you have one level where you're there right there with the clock, and then you can even go up even higher. And I really think that's why.
there's time tickets and they really limit the amount of people that that last little stretch was almost like climbing up a ladder. Yeah. Going up there. And it's not very big. They did have the time tickets. They did it like on that. I want to say like on the hour and then 20 after and 40 after or something like that. It was every 20 minutes. But I will say that they had walkie talkies and they were in communication with like how many people were up there And he would kind of tell you there was a guy there and he would kind of tell you, okay, you can go up.
But it was interesting the different levels the different areas that you were climbing had information about the tower
And now we were there at the very end of April and we did not buy tickets ahead of time, but you couldn't even go into it unless you had tickets. So it showed you like, okay, you can go online. We actually had to wait about, was it about an hour I think, before the next ticket. It actually ended up working out perfect for us because it gave us
chance to do golden hour but I would say that if this is something if you're listening to us and you're like I really would like to do that I would probably plan this in advance probably especially during high season I would say that we weren't there during high season because I would imagine that they probably does sell out.
speaker-0 (13:11)
that and if you want specific times of the day like one of the golden hours. Now it does close before sunset and so keep that in mind you're not going to be able to go up there for you know and catch sunsets from from the top but if you wanted to go up there and be there during the golden hour plan that ahead of time.
speaker-1 (13:31)
But it was
absolutely, mean, like Scott said, it was absolutely a very, very neat thing. I think it was like 10 euros per person. And there was a municipal museum that you could go back to, but you didn't have to even do it that same day. We didn't get a chance to go back and see that, but I think the ticket was good for like 180 days or something like that to go do that. So we'll put the link for the official site, because that's where you need to get the tickets and then you just need to have them to show.
We actually ended up going into the cathedral and then coming back. Because I know one thing, Scott was a little bit like, ⁓ no, never mind, because we'll have to come back. And I said, no, let's really do this.
And I'm glad we did. So we just went to the church and then came back. And that's also where we spotted San Luca up on the top of the hillside. We had seen something about this. We had seen the trams that you could take the train up there and it's got the longest portico and then there's a church up at the top. But now we were like, we've got to go up there and see what that is because it's like, okay, you're in the city and now you're almost looking out, on the hillsides and the mountains.
speaker-0 (14:39)
Yeah, I think
we should almost explain what this tram is though. it almost looks like a kid's ride. It's like a tractor that pulls these little cars behind it. But this is one of the ways that you can get up to San Luca is taking this tram from right there in Piazza dei Maggiore.
speaker-1 (14:58)
And we had actually planned to do that. I think we're going to talk about that going up there in a minute. We had actually planned to do that. But I will say real quick while we are talking about the tram is I did look up some information online. People had talked about they bought their tickets online or they said it was sold out. But then I read on their website to even go check in person that sometimes you can grab tickets in person. It's right there in the square. The funny thing was, though, I think you probably do need to check their
because like a lot of things in Italy, especially in smaller places, I do think that they closed like during lunch, right? We saw them like sitting there during lunch one time. So definitely plan around that. then, but you also wouldn't be able to go at sunset. So we're gonna come back to the Sand Look at in a minute and explain to you how we did it.
speaker-0 (15:44)
Yeah,
one of things I want to talk about before we leave Piazza di Maggiore first is there are lots of people there. So this is the main plaza. The unfinished church is right there in this piazza. And a lot of people are going to be there to take pictures of this church.
Especially from the outside, they're going to be sitting on the steps in front of it. There's going to be lots of tour groups there. we encountered just tons of people in that piazza. So when you climbed up into this tower, now you have this tremendous
view from up above looking down over that church. And so like from a photography perspective, now you had a much clearer shot that you could get without a lot of people in it.
speaker-1 (16:37)
So we're not gonna give a lot of information about the church. It's not anything that costs money. It's free to go in. You probably do want to check the hours because I think it was like not open in the mornings but open in the afternoons. From the outside, I mean it's big, but from the outside it just doesn't look like anything like what you're gonna see in places like Florence or Siena or any of these cathedrals. It looks very plain because it is unfinished. It was actually also a church that was done by
the municipality as well. So there's other churches in Bologna that you can see, but the inside of it, I think is where it really shines.
So another attraction that we almost skipped was the anatomical theater. I was actually talking to the lady that helps the host of the place we were staying, talking to her in her office and just asking her for a couple more suggestions. I think maybe for our last day or we had a couple more days or something. And this was one that she said,
If you could go to the Teatro Anatomico,
She said that was absolutely fantastic. Someone tell you about it in a second. But here's the other thing, is that she looked it up real quick and she was like, well, I think you're gonna miss it for today. For whatever reason, it was like almost one o'clock. It was one of the days that we were just kinda getting some things done. And she said, I think it's gonna close early today. But we actually decided, we had a couple of other places that she had suggested as well that we're gonna talk about. So we were just like, well, let's just stop by and just see. And sure enough, it was open. And it was gonna be open the rest of the afternoon.
even though Google said it closed at one o'clock. So it's just, it's very bizarre, but we have encountered this lots of times in Italy and I think in Spain too. So just know that that's a thing. So I'm glad that we ended up doing this. We went in, it was another one of those things where there was a placard there that said you needed a time ticket. I went online and got it real quick, but we could go in right away.
the Archegenozio of Bologna.
so it was built in the late 1500s. It was used for lectures and debates, and one of the most notable types of lectures would have been on human anatomy. There was this marble table in the center of the room where they would have the corpse, they would do the dissections, they would have the lectures and almost debates about it. And what was so interesting is that they talked about how it was, they would debate not only the anatomy, but also like philosophical
things and all this stuff. So this is one of those places, I won't go into a bunch of detail about it, but this is one of those places where the guide tells you here's the Wi-Fi, here's the audio guide which is free or included in your ticket but you listen to it on your phone.
This is one of those where you have to listen to that because the information that they give you about what they did in that room and then just all the statues that are in there, the constellations on the ceiling was just absolutely phenomenal. And I guess the key is also there were these amazing sculptures in there where you can see it's almost like looking at
I'm trying to think how you would describe it. Like when you go to the doctor or even in that, well, I guess in an anatomy book, right? And
speaker-0 (19:49)
Like if you peel the skin off of somebody.
speaker-1 (20:58)
can see the muscles and the tendons and all that stuff. Usually you see it like in a book. This was actually carvings And so that part was just absolutely phenomenal. That ended up being a highlight for me. I enjoyed that.
speaker-0 (21:12)
Well, earlier I had talked a little bit about San Luca and once we saw it from the tower, it became one of those, we've really got to go there type moments. And we had gone to a camera store outside of town. We took a taxi out there.
And we said while we're out we should just go on up to San Luca and so we took a taxi about halfway up
and then we walked the rest of the way up and then all the way back down. And this turned out to be a bit more of an exercise experience than what we had expected, but it was 100 % worth it. The sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca was closed by the time we got up to the top, so you might want to make sure you plan to get there a little bit earlier so that you can go in and see this chapel before closing time.
speaker-1 (22:05)
But we did get there in time to walk at the very top and then we also had time for sunset. But here's what I want to say was the coolest thing about the time that we went is the people who live right close to that, like literally that is their exercise. They sometimes alone in groups, walking, running, they literally go to the top of that and then turn around and come back down.
And it is quite the workout, but it was a very social thing, I felt like. So for me, it was fun to experience a place like that, how the locals would experience, although we were much slower.
speaker-0 (22:47)
Yeah,
but they did, they use this as a place to walk, run, exercise. There's a lot of stairs in here, so I just want to call that out for anybody that would be challenged with the stairs. And it is going up the side of a mountain, and I think it's about four kilometers of portico that goes up that side of the
speaker-1 (23:09)
Yeah, I believe it was something like 666 arches or something like that. And you're under that portico the entire time. Views of the portico, like either way, if you're going up, there is one place where guess it kind of, a couple of places where it kind of turns, but then you're seeing that portico all the way up. Once it starts to get down, the lights come on. And so it had a completely different look and feel to it. But we felt fine because like,
like people were still making their way up. Locals were still making their way up.
speaker-0 (23:42)
mean, there were
hundreds of people around.
speaker-1 (23:45)
Not too crowded, still a good number of people. so if you want to see it, take the tram, be mindful of the train, but I think that the walking it.
gives you whole different experience. So you could take the train earlier and then walk it down maybe if you wanted to. So when we got back down to the bottom, we rewarded ourselves with a gelato from a local stand, just a little like food truck stand that was just right outside the FC Bologna Stadium, the Bologna Football Club Stadium.
So Scott, here is probably, well, in this part of the trip, this was our second example of a time when it's been hard for us to get a taxi in Italy, which is why we got the gelato in the first place.
speaker-0 (24:27)
Yeah, I tried several different apps, FreeNow, Uber, we've used AppTaxi, right? There's a bunch of different ways of calling cabs across Italy. And you just have to figure out which one works.
But Bologna was one of the places where, or especially right here at the bottom of this walk, it was just one of those dead places where I guess it's hard to get a taxi. We just didn't even see them. Like they weren't even coming through that area. And so we tried to use the Uber app to call a taxi.
And free now and it just kept saying waiting waiting waiting Especially busy this time of evening or whatever
So I think it was just a matter of this is not a place where the taxis go. And so was kind of a dead zone for taxis. I don't know why the FC Bologna football stadium is right there. But since there was no game that night, the taxis weren't.
speaker-1 (25:28)
And there were plenty of locals, like people were parked, there were other people at the ice cream place, there were people, we saw some restaurants, people going out to eat. Thankfully, we could take a bus and we kept seeing the buses go by. So we just looked up on Google Maps and figured out, okay, how do we take the bus? And we've seen a couple of paths. So that was super easy. We got on, you tap your phone or your card and we just kind of looked at the app to see, you what was close for us to get off. So that worked out fine, but.
speaker-0 (25:55)
Speaking of buses
though, we had the exact same problem in Bologna, because we were going to try to take the bus out to that camera store initially. We had figured out how to do it. We went to where the bus is supposed to be and we waited through like three or four different cycles and we weren't alone. There was a bunch of people there and the bus never showed up.
I would just say if you can arrange your transportation in advance, like booking in advance, or get a phone number for a taxi company where you can call them. Because I didn't feel like in Bologna specifically that the apps were really useful.
speaker-1 (26:36)
But we've seen
⁓ either posted in our Airbnbs or like host have, we've seen different taxi numbers and stuff like that. So that is a great suggestion because we've actually used that several times to schedule a taxi in advance. But I think the way that we did it, like walking one of the ways was absolutely fantastic.
speaker-0 (26:57)
Well,
you know, there's a lot of free things that you can do in Bologna as well. And I would say they're worth your time. So I'm talk about three different ones. The Basilica di San Petronio, Sala Borsa Library.
and Basilica di Santo Stefano, which is there's seven churches that are right there together and they're actually even kind of connected in, which was kind of unique. All of those were free and you could go in and visit them. I think the one of the most famous is the Finistrella di Via Piela.
And what that is is there's a little wooden door that's in the wall. And if you open up this door, behind it you'll see one of the canals that runs through Bologna. And if it's closed, you totally would miss this. I mean, you can actually go across the street and see the canal
speaker-1 (27:57)
And we did that several times, not even no.
speaker-0 (27:59)
and took pictures of the
canal But on this other side is just this little wooden window and it's a view into the canal or part of the canal that you wouldn't be able to see unless that window's open. And I think we walked by it several times not even knowing it was there.
speaker-1 (28:18)
Yeah, and I think people may have even been looking out at part of the time, but we thought that maybe they were getting wine or aperitivo or something because there were several restaurants and chairs and tables like literally right there. But talking about free things, I think in Bologna there's more free things than in any of the other cities. I felt like Florence and some other
places it's just like everywhere so many people want to go so everywhere they charge which I don't blame them but that was what was nice I think about Bologna is that so many things were free.
speaker-0 (28:55)
Yeah, and I think it goes back to kind of what we said is this wasn't a city built around tourism. It has tourism. It's just not built around it.
speaker-1 (29:05)
Yeah.
One of the things I wanted to say about the Sala Borso Library, it is actually right there, right off of the main plaza And I had seen people like going in and out, and this is an actual real like working library where people go and books and music and study and do all kinds of things. Again, our host had told us about this and she said, there's Roman ruins in the bottom of it. These are very clear to see. But what she actually said,
is on the main floor there's a glass floor and you can look down well they were having some kind of lecture and I saw there's a sign that said
speaker-0 (29:38)
lecture.
speaker-1 (29:42)
what do they call it? Archaeological something and it pointed down and so we just walked down there and when we walked in there was nobody. There wasn't even anybody sitting outside. The funny thing is is like a lot of places you go the placards are in Italian and then in English everything was in Italian. So definitely not a tourist place but we just walked around and it and well I say the ones inside the placards outside were only in Italian. Once you got inside it kind of
the different excavations of the building and that part was in English. But that was just really fascinating and just something neat to do. But then of course the library was just unreal. There's a cafe and a bar and they were having lectures and there was a kids area. I mean it was like the most phenomenal public library I think I've ever been into.
speaker-0 (30:30)
Yeah,
there was the guy in the listening room and he was listening to all the old vinyl and he was jamming out in there. He was having a good time. One thing I would say is just be mindful is that glass floor that looks down over the archaeological site. Well, obviously when you're downstairs and you look up into the...
the ceiling, the glass ceiling there, you can see the people upstairs. they were sitting there in chairs listening to these lectures. But just keep that in mind if you're walking across that glass floor, is there might be people down there in the archaeological site.
speaker-1 (31:09)
Yeah, and I actually loved that the area with the seven churches. mean, that was fascinating because they are so old. So that was that was really neat. We hit it at a good time. I think that was probably maybe where we saw the most like groups of like tour groups, I guess, coming coming through.
speaker-0 (31:28)
They really starting to be a lot of them as we were leaving, we hit it at just the right time.
speaker-1 (31:34)
So Scott, Bologna is known for its food. Now, and Bologna.
speaker-0 (31:38)
La Grossa.
or La Grossa. It's La Grossa.
speaker-1 (31:46)
And just its name, I guess, Bologna, right? You think of, we do, Bologna, but for there they call it the mortadella, right? That's kind of what it's known for, it's their Italian.
speaker-0 (32:00)
And
I love me some good mortadella Melissa even got I think to liking mortadella
speaker-1 (32:06)
Yeah, I think fresh and cold and just depending. I mean, I think that some places you get it is sliced thin, but I think really it's supposed to be sliced nice and thick as well. The neat thing I think about Bologna is if you think of like, I don't know what it's the word bespoke.
high end Italian food, little grocery shops. We ran across so many of those and not just near the market area. So the market area is somewhere that you definitely want to visit right off of the piazza.
But they were just gorgeous. It would be the meats and the cheeses and the focaccia and then pre-made all kinds of things and then specialty. I mean, just anything you can think of, just phenomenal. And going in and wandering in some of those is absolutely fantastic. Now, I want to say you guys know that we are not particularly foodies, right? So we're not going to be, we have to go to or we even, seek out and go to Michelin star restaurants or anything like that.
But we did have, I mean we had some great food in Bologna.
speaker-0 (33:10)
Yeah, and one of the things that we did was we mix going to restaurants with actually going to the grocery store as well. And I think that was really one of my favorite parts of Bologna. You know, we had just returned from Morocco where we had to eat out for almost every meal, right? Other than the couple of meals that we shared in someone's home.
we were eating out the rest of the time. And so it was nice to just go back to our apartment. We had a small kitchen there and to fix some, some meals. We had a CONAD city, was not too far from our apartment. And we could go pick up some, some things for that evening to prepare fresh. And
So I think that was one of the benefits of having the apartment.
And as an example, one of the nights we decided we would prepare dinner there in the apartment. And I went out and bought some fresh pasta from the store, got some olive oil and garlic and a bottle of wine. And we just cooked some pasta there inside the apartment. Now you like yours with lots of pepper in it.
speaker-1 (34:22)
⁓ gosh, yeah, their shaker poured out the whole peppercorns. I don't know what was going on with that. So that was a little bit of a...
adventure trying to pull those out. But you know, it's also really fun if you have the opportunity to cook and prepare some of your meals because then you do get to go grocery shop. We got to do this a little bit in Spain too, mostly in bigger stores, I would say in Spain, because we were in the city and there these particular ones that we have used ⁓ in the cities are called CONAD.
city I think so smaller but I mean they pretty much have had like almost everything and so it's fun to just see and pick out some things and also just see how much money you can save right when you're able to prepare some of the things because you know eating out and dining out gets expensive and being able to get fresh fruit and fresh vegetables and do some different things like that and shop it's just been kind of fun.
speaker-0 (35:21)
So we had some really good restaurant experiences as well.
speaker-1 (35:24)
Yeah, so that first evening Scott had gone to the market and came back said, there is a trattoria around the corner and we have got to get a reservation there for another night.
He said, there are a zillion people, but they all seem to be locals. And that's definitely one thing that we always want to try to seek out that I think probably causes us more strife. I think when picking restaurants is, is this a local place? Is this a touristy place? Is this the food going to be good? Because if you're going to have a meal and spend the money and the effort, you always want to have something good.
So the next day, I guess we walked by and got a reservation and it was a neat place. It was red tablecloths, like honestly, very what you would think as a traditional Italian family restaurant. That's exactly what it was.
speaker-0 (36:18)
We laughed because when we went in to make the reservation, they sent us inside and we had to talk to this guy and he was sitting at a desk and he opens up this big book and so he writes down our name and all for the reservation.
Well, when we went back for the actual dinner, this guy's still sitting there at that desk, but now instead of just, doing the reservations, he's got a bunch of other paperwork that he's doing as well. And he's the guy that you have to pay when you leave.
speaker-1 (36:51)
Yeah, this wasn't one of the places where they're gonna come to your table to, you know, for you to pay and do the machine. This is his job. So that was really neat.
we actually found out that this restaurant has been in the same family run for quite a long time. ⁓ that was definitely worth trying. Turns out we actually were in a neighborhood that was just really good for local trattoria's, places to get things to eat. We had a lot of restaurants right around it.
speaker-0 (37:07)
think it's like from the 1800s. In the same family.
So the name of this place is Trattoria del Rosso, and we would highly recommend this as a place if you're in Bologna. They had a lot of the traditional pasta dishes with the wild boar ragu and those type of things, or the pomodoro sauce. I actually had the ham shank.
that was cooked in a broth with some onions and it was phenomenal.
speaker-1 (37:49)
And I feel like that Bologna is one of those places, at least for us, that we literally could walk around and if something looked good, we could say, let's try it. There was enough streets and places where all of the shops and then the restaurants and things like that were mixed in. And maybe it was because in Bologna, we were never looking for something in particular, but
Since then, that's kind of been a little bit more of a challenge of finding stuff, but we didn't have that issue in Bologna at all. Bologna is also a great place to go for an aperitivo, which is usually a drink and then a small bite before dinner, whether it is like the meat and cheese with a little bit of bread or a bruschetta or I'm trying to think what are some others.
speaker-0 (38:37)
Often when you
go for an aperitivo, you'll order a drink and then maybe they'll bring you a little small thing of chips or something like that or a little small basket of bread. So that's their traditional. Then you can add on things like the meat and cheese plates if you wanted to.
speaker-1 (38:54)
And Bologna is also known for a little round type of bread with almost like a little flower design on it. We had that ⁓ several times.
speaker-0 (39:04)
And when you're visiting Bologna, there's an Osteria that we never made it to, but you may want to put this on your list. It's called Osteria del Sol. It was founded in 1465, and it's widely considered to be one the oldest taverns in Italy, and even possibly the world. It's operated in the same location for over 500 years, with its layout largely unchanged.
So if you want a piece of Bologna's living culture, not just a place to eat or drink, go inside this Osteria. The concept here though, I think is what surprises most people. They don't serve any food. It's just wine and beer. And you're expected to bring your own food by going to a nearby shop in the
market Think of you know like mortadella parmigiano reggiano fresh bread olives whatever you want
You go get that in like this cone and you take it into the asteria with you. You sit at communal tables and you're often shoulder to shoulder with locals and other travelers. They did have signs, no videoing in there. They want to keep this unique
Obviously that makes the Instagrammers mad because they can't go in there and video it and post it and stuff like that.
speaker-1 (40:29)
You know what was funny about it is we actually our very first day we got there And we were looking for a late lunch We ended up and this is right in the heart of where the market is and there's lots of little Places to eat right there and we ended up eating at a place that's a inside It's though one of those high-end grocery stores But they also have tables outside where then you can sit and they'll they go in and then you if you Get meat and cheese they slice it fresh. Well, this was right across the way
And the other thing you probably may know or should know about Scott and myself is that we really do try to steer clear of like the Instagram or social media trendy places to eat, that kind of thing, because we have found that a lot of them, it's a long line, then everybody's videoing. And then sometimes, but not always, then they don't live up to the hype. They become famous for
whatever reason, but they don't live up to the hype. Well, we are sitting there eating and we are looking at this like, I'm thinking, I wonder why they have all these signs, no photos, no videos, no, it actually is like no baby strollers and stuff too, although I did see a family go in with a baby stroller. And you did see people stop though and try to take pictures from, we, food tours were going on and they would stop and talk about it. And then one food tour in
the leader of the tour had gotten food for the tour and then they were gonna go in and have a drink. So here we happened upon this really famous place and we're like, what even is this? Like, why is this drawing so much interest? So like Scott said, we didn't make it back there, but just a neat place to know about.
So before we kind of close up, I wanted to spend a minute talking a little bit about safety, especially because this is Italy and you hear a lot of things. It is important that when you're traveling to always, and I don't think it matters where you are going to keep a heightened awareness of your surroundings. And this particularly kind of hit me for Bologna was because like literally as we were leaving for our trip, I saw this reel where this girl was talking
about they had gotten robbed and then she was like filming this like purse snatching ring and and all this stuff and I was like look to see where it was and I'm like my gosh and it almost made me really nervous we had not been to Bologna I didn't really know that much about Bologna but once we got there
Like we never felt uncomfortable. I mean, like I said, you always want to, you know, keep an eye on your belongings, keep your purse closed, cross body, you know, whatever. But we honestly never felt uncomfortable because it feels like such a local place. Now.
We never went out really late at night. We always tried to stay in places where there's other people. But between the main areas and where our apartment was, we weren't anywhere really far out. I would say that we were within the main, between the city center and the train station even. And we, like I said, didn't go out late at night. They did have great security on our building. I think you see this
a lot of places in Italy. So you did have a code to get in the building And then we had a code like to get into our room. But just be aware. But also I felt I just kind of felt silly because I did have a lot of anxiety about visiting Bologna and then other places in Italy. And but but something could happen anywhere as well. And people live and live here. And so I would just say, of course, keep your wits about you.
speaker-0 (43:59)
I want to call it out for what it is. It's horse crap. It's a city. It doesn't matter what city in the world you're in. This could happen anywhere. And it's going to happen to the people who walking around with their noses stuck in their phones and they're not paying attention to their surroundings. And those are they're walking around with a Rolex or they're walking around with their Louis Vuitton bags and stuff like that
It doesn't matter the city. I personally want to call this out as pure horse crap. This is not a Bologna problem
speaker-1 (44:34)
Well, what I found was interesting because, speaking of designer bags, which it was a factor in this girl's case, but Bologna is a city where there are quite a number of wealthy people and we saw a lot of locals carrying expensive handbags.
speaker-0 (44:50)
But they're attention. They're not walking around with their nose stuck in their phone all the time. People, get off your phones. Look around. You're missing so much. By just not even looking around and having your phone looking and trying to find that next location, that next checklist thing of where you're gonna go and get a picture. Just look around.
Just be aware of your surroundings.
It's not a Bologna problem. So just stop talking about it as a Bologna problem on the internet, people. Please.
speaker-1 (45:24)
And just keep, yeah, keeping all your things. Now, I will say, and I guess we haven't mentioned this in this episode, and not to really play it up, but this is a place where, as you were sitting there, and it would happen to us as tourists, and it was happening to the locals, people were definitely coming around trying to sell you things, right? The Rose, the Power Bank, I don't know what all. Just the thing is, you just have to say, no thank you,
no, right, see, whatever, and just let them move on. So don't let social media talk you out of going somewhere that's absolutely worth experiencing. Yes, sometimes you're gonna have these nuisances, but you would've missed all the other stuff. So just awareness.
speaker-0 (46:06)
Well
would say if there's one takeaway from Bologna, for me it's this. Don't overplan it.
speaker-1 (46:12)
Yeah, so I know we've listed a lot of things that we found particularly interesting and some of that for you, like none of those may be interesting. That's just where we found most of our favorite spots. It was just like giving ourselves time to wander. Like we didn't have to necessarily go and do any of these things. And I think that's what was nice about Bologna.
more than some other places that we're visiting. We're gonna talk about this in some future episodes, was that as you wandered around that main, and when I say the main, I mean, it's actually, it's a pretty large area, you found interesting churches, the canal.
restaurants, shops, like things to just pop into of interest. And I think that was what we loved about Bologna the most. So give yourself four or five days if you can to enjoy it to its fullest. And even if you don't have that much time, just try not to over plan it. If you do want to plan stuff, maybe plan one thing a day and then just give yourself time to explore.
speaker-0 (47:21)
Well, if there's one thing I would like to tell you about Bologna, it's this. Don't try to do the city. Let your curiosity be your guide. Get out and explore. It's compact, it's walkable, it's easy to navigate, and the best moments happen when you're not looking for them.
If you're planning a trip and want help building something around places like this, reach out to us. And if you want all the places we mentioned today, we've got the full blog post at sunshinetravelers.com Thanks for listening and make sure to check back for future episodes on walking through Tuscany with Macs Adventure, Pisa, and Florence.
Speaker 1 (48:08)
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Speaker 2 (48:45)
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