Ahoy Italia!

Hello, hello...it's been a while! Summer is over, and my island job is over for the year. Now it's slowly turning into autumn and chilly weather (hopefully coming soon) and all the good stuff that comes along with it. Roasted chestnuts and hot tea and pretty leaves and cosy blankets!

But (drumroll), we spent the first week of October in Italia! We were originally supposed to go for our honeymoon and it was supposed to happen last October, but because we didn't have any money, we waited until 2017 to take our trip. Last year, we tried to substitute a trip to Montreal but our car died en route so we never made it there either! So I guess our "real" honeymoon ended up being the night we spent in Fishkill last August when we hiked Storm King and ate pancakes at a diner and went to the art center (which is maybe the best honeymoon for us?!).



So anyway - our Italy trip! We planned it for so long that it kind of started feeling abstract, even after we had plane tickets and AirBnbs booked. But then it was suddenly here! After a fairly rushed trip to the airport that ended up being completely fine we were on our way. And eight hours later, after not sleeping much at all but being able to watch a World Cup qualifier on the way, we landed in Milano.

Our original plan was to fly into Rome and out of Florence, but it was way cheaper to fly in and out of Milan...so we added a day onto the beginning and end of our trip - a day in Bologna on the way in and a day in Milano on the way out! So right after we got to Milan, we set out for Bologna. Everything was super fast - we got our luggage in about 5 minutes, customs barely glanced at our passports, and suddenly we were sitting on a train that connected with the main railway station and from there - Bologna!





Our AirBnb in Bologna was a bit of a walk from the train station, but because practically all of the sidewalks in the city are wide stone walkways under those portici, it was easy to roll our tiny suitcases over there! (We definitely appreciated this in hindsight, after Rome and especially Florence.) We rented an extra room in a couple's apartment - it was really nice and had everything we needed, including our own huge bathroom. After getting some tips from our super friendly host, we set out wandering. Neither of us knew much of anything about Bologna before we got there, except that they're known for their food and their university.







So we wandered! And it was great. We got delicious food - tagliere for late lunch (cheese & meat plate) and tagliatelle al ragu for dinner. We sat in a piazza as the sun was setting and might have accidentally dozed off on each others' shoulders because we hadn't slept in about 36 hours. There were lots of people around, lots of young people (huge university, after all). We wandered until it was dark out and decided we'd have to return to Bologna someday, for more than just one night!