Bologna to Casteggio, Friday, Mar 24

We awake in our Air B&Bat an early hour. After trying to take a shower, I discover the hot water lasts less than 2 minutes! Brrr! Well, I’m awake now! So we get dressed for the day and pack up our bags for this first part of our trip is day by day! We have a 700 meter hike to get our car as we are staying in the city center where parking is fairly non existent! But we find a breakfast restaurant on the way to break up the hike! Again, getting Americano Coffee is a real treat as they just can’t get it right!

We drive our car back and park it illegally for 5 minutes while we run back up to the room and pull our luggage out. Now we are on our way for a fairly short travel day. We drive just over an hour to Parma where we find a lucky parking spot near the city center and start walking around the area.

An interesting Basilica grabs our attention, but alas, it doesn’t open until 3:30PM. We will be long gone from here by then. We locate a deli called “Salumeria Garibaldi” and we have lunch here. Dozens of legs of Prosciutto hang here and how we would love to bring one home! But that is not to happen so the next best thing is to order many slices along with slices of salami and generous slices of Parmigiana Cheese with a fun bread, almost a croissant type! Top it off with glasses of white and red wine and lunch is served! Interesting that Elee’s white wine is served in a wine glass but my red wine is served in a cup!

We then walk around the city for an hour and take in the sights. Not as pretty of a city as Assisi or San Marino but interesting in it’s own right! And we had Parmigiana in Parma! How many can say that?

So we drive on to Piacenza where we find even less interesting sights. A short stay there and we drive on to our final destination for the evening, Casteggio. An interesting place that brings our drive tomorrow even shorter.

We are in an AirB&B Farmhouse in wine country called, “Cacina Angelina” where our hosts don’t speak a lick of English and we don’t speak more than 10 words in Italian! Thank goodness for Uncle Google, my favorite Uncle!

We head back to town and stop to gather sunset photos over the vineyards on the way! We come across a supermarket and pick up a few sundries to help sustain us for the next week or so. A new corkscrew to replace the one that TSA thought was too dangerous. Some chips to sustain us while browsing the TV channels for an English speaking one (not to be found in 400 channels, trust me I went through every one!) and a couple bottles of Barbera for late nights writing Blogs!

Then we cruise around town looking for authentic Italian food. We finally stumble upon “Cafe Il Ponte” where they invite us in and we ask to see a menu. Not a strange request for most people, but definitely a strange request for Italian restaurants, at least this one! They show us a pizza menu. We sort of shrug and attempt to leave. The waitress tries to corner us in the most pleasant of ways and, with the help of Uncle Google once more, we continue chatting with her over our phone screens! It becomes quite entertaining discussing with her our likes and desires for a meal!

Glasses of wine placed in front of us solidifies our commitment to staying here and we take it as a, “Whatever happens happens”, LOL. I can’t wait to see the check! We impart to her our desires to have Italian meats, Pasta and Cheeses and Elee even suggests a salad. We got everything except the salad! Course after course flowed to our table. Again I think, ‘What will the bill be?’

It is a pleasant night and we just go with it. The waitress comes around often and the wine flows. Elee is drinking a dry Reisling which is something that would normally be averse to our desires. But it is quite good! I am drinking a dry Chianti, again something I would shy away from at home. But it is not the weak, thin red wine that one thinks about when one thinks about Chianti, it is robust and quite good!

A family group is lead into the room where previously only Elee and I have been in. It is a group of 16 or 18 people and a couple of them eye us with what looks like contempt because how dare we be in their private space? Their party ensues and I pull up Google Translate on my phone and type in, “Have a great night!” I show the phone to a couple of them and the all shout, “Grazie” (Thank You) and all is well with the world! It is amazing how a little kindness goes a long way! Our bill arrives and is only 60 Euro (about $70) and that includes all the wine, the cheese and meats and a serving of a linguini type pasta served to a perfect aldente!

So we drive away and wind our way back up the switchback roads to the top of the hill to our AirB&B farmhouse for the night! How many of you have ever stayed in an Italian farmhouse? Such a treat! We can’t wait for our hosts to make breakfast for us in the morning!

Good night all!

San Marino to Bologna, Thurs Mar 23

We wake today and have breakfast at the hotel. Getting used to Americano Coffee will take some doing, but it’s not bad. We pack up and walk our luggage to the car. Then we walk back into the top of San Marino and seek out the ramp and stairs to the first tower.

Quite interesting to climb into a tower that was started in the 11th century. Mountaintop views are always amazing and these views don’t disappoint. Who doesn’t love castles on a hill? Stone towers with stairs and ladders to get to the top take our breath away in more ways than one!

We also spy a church on the way to the top and it is open! So Our cameras snicker at us and drag us inside!

Then we head back down and get in the car with the plan to drive 2 hours to Bologna. The mountain roads zig and zag in switchbacks until we are finally down to the bottom. Then it is an uneventful drive on the toll roads to Bologna. It turns out that most all highways in Italy are toll roads. Thank goodness for GPS as locating our next hotel in the center of Bologna creates a bit of a challenge! But after a couple of wrong turns and GPS re-navigating the route, we finally locate it. But then there’s the challenge of getting someone to answer the door of the B&B we have reserved. A lovely lady comes along and seems to know how to contact our landlord and all is good.

We get settled into our B&B and get instructions for where to park our car, some 700 meters away. A mere 10 minute walk. This is standard in Italian cities, it seems. So now we head out and walk to the city center where all the thousand year old buildings are and we find the Plaza Di Maggiore Square and get an outdoor table to have a couple cocktails. A couple of musicians are playing guitar and keyboards and are drawing quite the crowds playing American Rock and Italian Ballads. We listen and rest while taking photos of city people scenes and decide it is time to walk on. I even catch a couple of lovers to add to my collection!

We go inside a cathedral in the square, The Basilica of San Petronio, and take our obligatory photos of yet another gorgeous Basilica.

Upon exiting we spot a cute little shuttle train and inquire and it is the San Luca Express and for a mere 12 Euros per person, it takes us up a steep hill to the San Luca Cathedral. It arrives at sunset and we get marvelous views of the sun illuminating the Cathedral’s already orange colored stone! Inside the Cathedral, it is yet another stunning interior and my cameras are entertained once again!

Back on the tram, we wind our way back down the hill alongside a famous Portico, aka a covered walkway, which Bologna is famous for! The City Center boasts over 38 (count them!) kilometers of Porticos! This one famous for leading up to San Luca, is 24 kilometers long and residents climb the last 2 every Easter Monday! Back in the Plaza Di Maggiore Square, we take some night photos of the buildings and then step one block off the Square to the Quadrilatico, the restaurant district.

We find seating at Osteria Quadrilatero and order dinner. Since we’re in Bologna, I order Lasagna Alla Bolognese and Elee orders a Tortellini dish. We enjoy the outdoor ambience of the restaurant seating in the street and the dinner is quite good! We also order wine varietals we have never heard of and are not disappointed! After dinner we walk the mile and a half back to our Air B&B to relax and get our blogs written and get a head start on editing the days photos!

So until tomorrow, we’ll bid you Adieu!

Assisi to San Marino, Wed March 22, 2023

We wake up refreshed this morning after almost 2 days of travel to get here (Count a half day of time zone changes). Breakfast in the hotel and we check out. The hotel gives us a key to get to our luggage when we finish touring the city. We walk around streets that were built in medieval times and are amazed how they are still used today! Small cars and trucks zoom up and down these streets as if they owned them (We guess they kind of do!) and you’d be best to pay attention and get out of the way when they zoom by!

We enjoy taking photos and walking the city and we aim ourselves toward the cathedral of San Francisco di Assisi, named after St Francis of Assisi. Any of you religious people will recognize this name. The exterior and interior of the cathedral are both amazing in their own rights! Do not get me started on the excesses of the catholic church for I, like most tourists, only want to see more as the views are amazing! The expenditures in money and labor are a side effect to the grandeur of the sights that abound!

So we shoot to our hearts delight and eventually head back to our hotel. Elee’s knees are yelling at her because she needs replacements (which are scheduled in May through July) and I go downhill to our parking garage and find out how to get our car out! Not an easy feat because they didn’t tell me that I had to pay the parking 150 vertical feet above where I parked it! LOL, my own knees are getting a workout! I finally get it figured out and get the car out! Now just to figure out the narrow, one-way roads and find my way back to the hotel where Elee is patiently waiting, or so I think, LOL. We pack our luggage and head out of town with the expectations of driving to our next destination of San Marino, an actual country embedded within the country of Italy!

The city of San Marino is basically a castle on top of a hill and the roads we have to take to get there are windy and difficult to traverse! At one point, a huge semi tractor trailer actually drives us off the road on a corner which he has no business of being on! I had to drop the right side wheels into a ditch to allow him to pass! WTF??? But that was the only extreme incident and the rest of the ride was just a challenging drive on small hilly and curvy roads!

We finally arrive in the country of San Marino and the signs and GPS warn us of a “Border Crossing Ahead”. It turns out the “Crossing” was simply the crosswalks turning blue, LOL. But if anyone were to do a Google Maps tour of the Country (and City), you would see a criss-cross series of zig zag roads that are amazing to see on a GPS map! We wind our way to the top where we have booked a hotel called the “Rosa Hotel” near the top of the Country Empire! We have to park a hundred yards downhill from the hotel and walk our luggage up. Luckily, this is our very first trip with only Carry-On Luggage so it’s not a real chore!

We check into our hotel and go off into the town to see what we can see. We walk to the town square and off to the Ariel Tramway to only discover we are already at the top! Views of the city and countryside galore assault our senses and camera lenses!

We stop for drinks and snacks at a restaurant that my California friends will find amusing, “In Or Out Burgers”, a play on In And Out. The wine and drinks are good, I have a Very Dry Prosecco and Elee has an Aperol Nisonni which is better than my Prosecco!

We then walk around the area to find a dinner restaurant and find “Betafico” which has some fun local dishes but I am a tad disappointed because I researched a local San Marino dish called “Nidi Di Rondine” which is an interesting Lasagne type dish and we couldn’t find it anywhere! We have experienced this before where we research a local dish that we cannot find! I promise myself to look up the recipe and make it at home!

So we take another walk around and end back at our hotel and relax for the night while we wind down!

Good night and see you tomorrow!

_{From home to Assisi, Mon, Mar 20 to Tue, Mar 21}

We get a ride to the airport from our trusted friend Tony and arrive early. We have no luggage to check as this is our first trip that we have decided to only use carry-ons. Should be interesting! So we hang out in a couple airport bars and sip wine and munch on bar food. When it comes time to head for our plane, it is a mile walk through a new section of the International Terminal we haven’t been before! The airport is always expanding! There is also a floor to ceiling window that when you look out, it looks like ominous clouds! But on closer inspection, the windows are painted with clouds being looked down on from above!

Well, the power is out to the escalators and elevators in this new section and Elee’s knees let her know how unhappy they are! We finally board the plane and the trip is uneventful. A mere 10 hours to Amsterdam and a 2 hour layover plus a 2 hour flight on to Rome. All these airports seem to get bigger every year and we certainly get our steps in!

What with exchanging our money for Euros and buying Italian Sim Cards for our phones, by the time we get our rental car, 2 hours have passed. We now have a 2.75 hour drive to Assisi and need to call the place to let them know we are arriving late. We get a tad lost in the city of Assisi and stop to ask directions. Two wonderful strangers not only help us, but they get in their car and lead us to our hotel! Italians are wonderful people!

We get checked into the hotel Santa Chiara in the middle of the town of Assisi and our concierge hops in our car with us and directs us to the parking which is a mere 1/2 mile walking but 2 miles to drive there! He then points us in the direction where we might find restaurants still open. We head that way and ask directions again as we pass some locals outside another hotel. The concierge at that hotel makes a phone call and a pizza restaurant around the corner keeps their doors open for us! So we sit down in Il Menestrello Ristorante Pizzeria and order a white pizza with truffles! Fantastic food and we even buy a couple bottles of wine for our hotel room!

We even pass by a random choir rehearsal!

But it has been a long 2 days of travel and we must say, “Buona notte e sogni d’oro!” Until tomorrow!