No Spaghetti Bolognese for us.

From Salzburg, we took a train to Bologna and met two really nice Canadian girls and chatted with them the entire time about our trips, as well as tried to avoid this creepy old man who looked like a rat and kept slobbering on himself and staring at us. We pretty much spent all day on the train to get to Bologna, Italy, including a change in Venice. We met a couple from Tasmania, Australia who were in their 80’s and doing an 8 week backpacking trip around Europe. They were pretty inspiring as it’s nice to see such older people being so adventurous regardless of the limitations that their age may bring them. Once we arrived in Bologna, Anthony, our host met us at the train station to walk us back to his flat, a few minutes away. Anthony is from France, but moved to Italy to perfect his Italian. He is a social worker and lives with 4 other room mates, 3 from Italy and one from Romania. His girl room mate Lorenza gave up her room for us and slept on the couch which was really nice.

Lorenza's room with a little balcony

When we got there, Anthony and the roommates cooked us a really nice pesto pasta with bread and Nikolai, the Romanian room mate set out Romanian cheese that his mom sends him, which was really interesting and not as salty as most other Eastern European cheese. We all chatted and had a 2.5 hour dinner as we tried to talk in a mix of broken Italian and really slow English. It was exciting though to learn about the Italian government and about the activism scene in Bologna. Anthony and Lorenza had a day trip planned to another part of Italy the next day and invited us to come along but we declined as we wanted to explore Bologna.

We woke up, took showers and headed out into the city, stopping for a really nice pizza lunch with a liter of house red wine before exploring the main piazza and it’s towers and churches.








Bologna is a nice mix of modern and traditional with decent shopping housed in ancient buildings under huge porticos. The most beautiful thing were the porticos, huge arched roofing over the wide marble sidewalks.


They had them on every street and they were gorgeous. We also stopped and checked out the University of Bologna which is the oldest university in the whole world. It was Sunday so we couldn’t take a proper tour but we did walk in a little to check it out. Walking is pretty much what we did all day, stopping for a really delicious gelato at this cute gelateria. We spent two hours in the grocery store as well, trying to figure out what to eat for dinner. We were mystified at the pasta aisle as it was the largest pasta aisle I have ever seen in my life. We came to the conclusion that Italians really only eat Italian food as there was no variety whatsoever in anything but pasta or bread or cheese. We found one euro bottles of wine and headed home to cook our pasta and get to bed early as we had to catch an early train to Ancona. Bologna was a decent city with good cheap food. I was wearing a tank top though and let me tell you that I have never had so much unwanted male attention in my life to the point where I was joking with Ellie that the next time we go outside, I need to wear a burka.

The next morning we woke up and caught our train to Ancona without any hitches and then had to take a bus to the ferry terminal to book our 22 hour ferry to Patras, Greece. We met two Icelandic boys along the way whose original plans were to go to Croatia but the ferry wasn’t running so they came with us to Greece.

The four of us all bought food and beer and wine for the long 22 hour journey and as we set sail out of Ancona, we said good-bye to Italy but just temporarily, as we would be back within 10 days.