Saturday June 1 Bologna

After a relaxing morning of coffee in bed and scrambled eggs with pancetta for breakfast, the day has begun. We bought a 24 hour bus pass (€4 each) and caught the bus to get to the market area east of Piazza Magiore. We bought clams from Pesceria L’Adeiatica(€3) and taglietelle from Paolo Atti & Figli (€4.59) for supper. We also got bread rolls for lunch to go with proscuitto and cheese from Simoni (€7.58). We then walked back to the apartment and attempted a short cut which took us down homeless ally! Unfortunately the gate was locked and we had to walk past the ‘toilet’ where some dude was taking a leak and smiling at me! We walked past the ‘bedroom’ and the dining room – a couple were having their lunch. Back to the main road and we walked in front of the walkway back to the apartment to drop off the shopping and have an early lunch. We caught a bus to Via Saragozza and walked down to Villa Sparda where we should have caught the bus to the top of San Luca. Instead we got the bus to the bottom of the steps and walked up to the Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca 269 meters above sea level. We missed the down bus by 10 minutes and so we walked the 2.276km back down. There are 350 arches on the walk and a LOT of stairs. At the top I filled our water bottle from the taps that exist all over Italy. These taps run constantly and supply cold fresh water to everyone. In Venice we saw people collecting the water in buckets! We then caught a bus so we could get close via Santo Stefano. In this street is the Cremaria Santo Stefano and we had the best gelato of our trip. Dave had a limone granite medio (€3.30) and I had cioccolato del santa – dark chocolate, and pistacchio di Bronte – gelato grande (€3.80). After that we caught another bus and got off near AF Tamburini, where we shopped this morning, before walking to see the canal at Via Piella. This and trying to see the waterfall at Caffè Opera e Tulipani on via Alessandrini were not worth it due to the scaffolding. We then took a slow walk back to the apartment stopping at Swine on via Augusto for prosecco (€12) and then watching a protest march. The riot police were in full force and the protest was against austerity measures. We could see very few Italians in the group. Mostly Indians and Blacks. I would love to be watching Sky news tonight! We then did some shopping at the Coop before coming back to the apartment. Tonight for a change we are drinking Birra Di Frumento non filtrata. Crackers to go with topped with salame Milano. We decided to have prosecco with our meal. We chose a bottle of Rocco dei Forti. Dave made a sauce of shallots, garlic, chilli, tomato and courgette to go with the clams and taglietelle. The clams were steamed with prosecco and made a fantastic broth. We finished our meal with kiwi fruit and strawberries with cream. We then finished the cheese and pesto on a few crackers before calling it a night!

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