La vita è bella a Bologna - Notes from Italy (Part 1)

Italy had never felt like the ideal holiday destination for me. Me, your melancholic poetic friend, feeling happy surrounded by concentrated la dolce vita? Come on! Never!

Until...

Until the time was right to dare leaving the Prague autumn and enjoy the last days of this year's summer. Yep, summer happened to be still the season in Italy in September.

The choice of the city was quite an easy one. We like nice and narrow streets. We like being in the city whilst having the opportunity to travel around, visiting small towns or villages. And if the sea is within a reasonable distance, the better. We picked the flight, booked the accommodation and suffered through what felt like half a century at work until the magical Outlook out-of-office messages were set. Bologna, here we come!

This time we avoided the anonymity of a big hotel. A lovely room in a lovely B&B became our home for a week. (Please note these words are only sponsored by great memories.) The place is just the purest reflection of the love and effort the owners are putting into it and I have to admit it filled me not just with admiration towards our hosts Francesca and Riccardo, but with reassurance that if you love what you do, things will turn out well. B&B? More like - Well.B&B!

And now let me sum up my personal highlights of our trip to Bologna. (Too bad one cannot share smells and tastes via the internet, as many of my highlights were in some kind of way connected to food. That's right! Me and food, for a week in peace with each other.)

~ The Accommodation. Our hosts were taking care of the breakfast (special gluten-free options available for your special wheat-free friend). Not only did I have toasts for the first time again in ages, we got some solid recommendations on where to go, where to eat and what nice places are worth seeing. Francesca turned out to be a great source of tips for restaurants where it would be safe for me to eat. While she was marking all those places on the nice city-map, I could not hide my positive shock. ("I can go to this many places? Am I in paradise?")

When you get better cosmetics in a hotel than you have at home :D 

And if you'd like to know what kind of people our hosts Francesca and Riccardo are, let me illustrate this with one picture. The day of our departure, us closing the door of our room, counting the hours we could still spend in the city until our plane departs and we'll head back to the Prague cold. We enter the kitchen, wanting to say goodbye to our hosts. And on the table there is a selection of gluten-free food for me to take home. For later.

Yes, this is the kind of human awesomeness which was crossing our ways in Italy.

Nice people and unexpected orchid exhibitions. This is Italy!

And they have pink churches as well!

Umbrellas? What for?

~ The Food. My goal was to try as much food - despite my limitations - as possible. Or at least avoid starving. After some previous experience and surviving on the bare minimum (Spanish tortilla, fries and bananas from the supermarket) I've experienced karma smiling right at me, serving the best dishes I've ever had in my life when on vacation. Apparently, Italy is the king, the highest culinary entity, the global capo di tutti capi not only in regular, but also gluten- and wheat-free cuisine. They prepare everything fresh, so there is no issue in leaving out one or two ingredients.

We were not really conscious about a certain budget, so don't expect any low-cost tips on where to get cheap food. But the food itself... Mamma mia! 

When in Bologna, you can try great pizza and homemade gluten-free gnocchi, tagliatelle or various other bits of edible awesomeness made by Mamma in our favorite Trattoria Pizzeria Belle Arti, located in the student-part of the city. Don't forget to order some vino della casa (yes, I always learn how to order wine in any local language and Italy was no exception). If you get hungry in the city center, go to La Capriata. And for heaven's sake DO NOT forget about trying the tiramisù! (By the way, all the desserts in this restaurant are per default gluten-free.)

If you're into some mystery, try Antica Osteria Romagnola. We didn't get the menu in the standard paper-format, just a very enthusiastic elaboration from the nicest elderly waiter ever. First they brought tapas and a plate of amazing, a-ma-zing mortadella (seriously - what bad imitation are they selling us here under that name?). Then they brought a bottle of sparkling wine. Then a thought suddenly crossed our minds - what if this all will cost us 300 euro? The restaurant was empty, the menu and prices nowhere to be found... After a glass of that wine we decided that spending 300 euro on an amazing lunch would not be the worst funny vacation memory. After finishing the bottle we cared about nothing anymore. And guess what - we didn't pay hundreds in the end. And after that sparkling wine, we were levitating through the city. Oh and in Italy, some restaurants close in the afternoon (this one as well). They let us in and served us with a smile during their afternoon break just because... I don't know, of pure niceness?

Close to Well.B there was a gluten-free pizzeria. Yes, I could eat everything there. We went to Vecchio Mercato twice and the pizza was amazing. (I can only manage eating half of a pizza, how come even the twelve-year-old sitting next to me manages eating the whole piece?)

I highly recommend an Italian gastronomic experience for those of you who might have - just like me - lost the joy of eating, developed real stress and shame for extra requests and questions asked in restaurants. Or for those of you who had been made uncomfortable by every condescending look of a waiter who thought you are just picky, not sick. Italy made up for everything. The incredible waiters, forthcoming and adjusting anything based on your needs and wishes. Dishes prepared freshly, in family-run restaurants. Recommendations made by the smiling personnel. And they always made sure to ask me in particular if I like what I have on my plate.

After a few days I run out of superlatives.

If you're a coffee-person, you can really go for a cuppa anywhere. Italian coffee is not too high in acidity, which is exactly the kind of coffee I like. It's not reflecting the ongoing trend here in Prague (as an example), where I can't drink black coffee without making a sour-face. The little steaming Italian shots with a chocolate aftertaste were just what I needed.

~ Strolling with a local. After this long trip to the world of Italian food and drinks, just one piece of advice from me: try experiencing the city with a local. At least for an evening. We met Valentina, a friend of my favorite fellow traveler whom he met during his Erasmus studies. One evening Valentina showed us not only how ridiculously good Italian women look only six months after having a baby, but as well some lovely corners of the city we would have missed without her. Such as the busy market Mercato delle Erbe. (Is it normal that I'm again thinking about that perfection in the form of a wooden plate covered with a selection of first-class paper-thin slices of selected meat?)

And another benefit of meeting a local who is a friend of your travel-buddy from long time ago - you can discover some dark nerdy chapters of your boyfriend's life. Ha!

~ What to see. Sightseeing in Bologna is something you can take easy if you're staying there for more days. This city has its own leaning tower(-s), a random-looking window into a magical water-street alley and a small but busy main square. What was worth seeing for me personally was the university, which filled me with weird nostalgia. Oh, those days of academic life. How would Margita now be, would she have pursued a serious academic path? (If in Italy, probably weighing 25 kilos more...)

This magic little door...

... and this library and these towers.

And the main square.

~ The Language! Just like in Spain, my brain absorbed the words which surrounded me. Meeting so many nice people got me rid of the initial shame and I spoke a bit Italian. Somehow Italian felt very familiar and natural to me.

On the other hand, people in Bologna are that much used to English that we had no problems using this language as well. But who would speak in English if there's the opportunity to practice the bella lingua italiana?

~ Places nearby. Bologna is located just perfectly and you can travel around and visit so many lovely spots and places. You can either go into small quiet towns like Ferrara, Modena, Parma or go see more busier, touristy towns like Florence, Pisa or Siena. And the sea is close too!

But back to Bologna...

~ We had everything in walking distance from our accommodation and we didn't use public transport. Bologna is really compact, the city center is easy to find and if you don't need to visit every church or museum, you can see the most important parts of the city in two afternoons filled with golden warm light.

The main square. 

Even in Italy some people hide from the sun in shadows. Why, oh why?

Life in Italy flows at a different pace.

The little shops. The actual scent of fruits in fruit-shops. No dreadful open-space offices in immediate sight (at least not in Bologna and around), but many family-owned businesses. History, culture, style.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this has been the best vacafood... I mean foodcation... I mean vacation abroad I've had so far.

And yes, I'm writing this while simultaneously searching for plane tickets...