Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Bologna and Its Amazing Food (Post #12)

This entry will be rather short and somewhat boring because quite frankly I want to get this one over with and try to catch up in addition to the fact that Bologna was my least favorite place yet. I went with Nick from Long Island, Juri and Lenny the Australians, and Kelly from UCal that you have been technically introduced to in previous posts. Three of my other friends came on the first trip with me. One of them is Sarita from Purdue, one is Luke from Australia but has an English accent (absolutely hilarious), and the other is Isadora a girl from France who attends school in Canada. We took the train to Bologna Friday, March 12 (Oh my god I really am THAT far behind in this blog). The guys booked a hostel and the girls stayed with a friend of Isadora. We split up when we got to Bologna and decided we would meet at like 11pm to go out. The four of us guys settled in the Hostel which was very nice as you can see in a picture shortly below.

Each "Room" was a small apartment-like building where you literally have your own one-story building with 4 beds, 4 dressers, a TV, and a very nice bathroom. You can see my bed right under the TV and Lenny's bed perpendicular to mine.

Hahahaha, in the next picture you can see the beds of Nick and Luke. Lenny and I walked in the door and called dibs on the two beds above instantly. Luke and Nick got the two beds that entertained us for hours. In the picture below you can see the two beds literally SIDE-BY-SIDE where they slept. In addition, if you click on the picture and enlarge it you can see there is a sliding door that closes their room off. What do you expect Lenny and I to do in this situation? Well it is obvious. Nick and Luke practically have to sleep together in their own private room so you can guess the entertainment and quality of jokes provided by this situation. You can see Nick giving me the middle-finger (what a jerk huh?) because we are making fun of them in their own little, private room. When we turned the lights off, Lenny and I would continue to close the sliding door to give them privacy in which Nick continuously opened it. By the time we went to bed, he put a couple chairs in the way so the door couldn't be closed. This was probably the highlight of the trip.


Anyways, after we were settled we went to find a place to eat so we asked the man working at the front desk what his recommendations were. He recommended two places and pointed them out on the map. One place was very close to where the girls were staying so we decided to go there. It was called Trattoria Fantoni I believe. Why do I remember this? Only because it was the BEST meal I have had yet and I am writing this on April 6th!!! This place was the DEFINITION of an Italian Restaurant. Trattoria Fantoni is a small yet comfortable home-styled and home-cooked Italian restaurant. They had a very small bar, two containers of White House Wine and Red House Wine. The best part yet was that it was packed and the tables were covered with red and white checkered table clothes. I swear it was the stereotype of an Italian Restaurant or at least what I had imagined before I got here abroad. We ordered Bolognese al Ragu which is basically fettucini noodles with this spectacular meat sauce covered in Parmesan Cheese. WOW!

We ended up hanging out at Isa's friend's place and went to and sat at a bar. It was pretty boring; I literally sat there doing nothing until 2am. I then had the best kebab of my life with potato, onion, cheese, and peppers in it. The guys called it a night and went back to the hostel where Lenny and I would make fun of the sleeping arrangements of Luke and Nick for an hour or so.

The next day we went all around Bologna. We saw some Basilicas that were the most unimpressive that I have seen. We went to the Two Iconic Towers in Bologna as you see the view from the tower in the picture below. This view happens to be from the Asinelli Tower that stands 97.2 meters tall. The Garisenda is the leaning tower in Bologna that is a descent amount shorter just a few meters from the base of the Asinelli.




The group and myself made the most of the beautiful day. We ended up walking around the rest of Bologna because it is quite small. The entire city seemed to be made out of the same exact stone as every building was the same exact color.

We sat in this square waiting for the time to come to catch our train to Florence. Most people liked Bologna for various reasons, but unfortunately I did not. I found it quite plain and boring. Everything looked the exact same and the buildings and significant towers and cathedrals were rather plain compared to the other marvelous places I had been. I know this blog entry was extremely boring, but it is nice to write a short one about a place I did not enjoy very much. The food was spectacular but that is all (whereas others loved Bologna) so its all based on opinion. There were a couple good stories but not good enough nor interesting enough to write about.

Florence is next, hopefully I can write that within a few hours and post it by Thursday afternoon.