Monday, April 15, 2013 -- Riomaggiore to Bologna

We’d been advised by our host that it was possible to drive our car into the tiny “downtown” before 10:00 so, rather than drag our gear uphill to the our garage. It was immeasurably easier for Tom to get the car out of the garage than it had been to back in it three days ago and he was able to drive it almost to our door.  This, however, turned out to be more blessing than curse.  As we were driving up the steep hill on our way out of town, we encountered a small school bus parked facing us.  Tom did not see the low wall on the passenger side of the car and we clipped it pretty much simultaneously with my warning shout.  The door and trim are pretty bent, the sliding door is scraped and the wind whistles through the gap between the window frame and the body of the car.  We don’t know the bottom line, but it surely won’t be pretty, but it could have been SO much worse.  Most importantly, no one was hurt, we hit a wall, not a car (Just imagining the bilingual hassle that would have been gives us chills!), and our car is perfectly functional, if not air tight!

So, off we went and we were soon breezing, a bit too speedily, up the Autostrada.  We were overtaken and flagged down by two lovely Italian policemen who inspected every document Tom could produce, advised him about speed limits and their meaning, and also about the requirement to have the headlights on, especially as we traveled through the many tunnels on our route.  They seemed especially interested in the visa stamps in Tom’s passport and the back side of his driver’s license; perhaps it was his status as an organ donor that impelled them to send us on our way with nothing but a few minutes’ delay of our progress. (After listening to their lesson on speed limits, I tried to keep my speed within the posted limit and found that everyone, including a Smart Car, was passing us. So much for that lesson.-Tom)

So, this morning could be the turning point that has us signing up for a bus tour to Niagara Falls, rather than planning the next “Mel and Tom on the Road” adventure…

Luckily, our stop in Parma held nothing but delights for us.  This lovely city has a largely pedestrianized Centro Storico, fine shops, an interesting duomo and accompanying baptistery clad in pink marble and another wonderful church, Santa Maria della Steccata, which was modeled on the original plan for St. Peter’s.  We enjoyed wandering around the city before heading back to the Autostrada. 

We made one more detour, to the small town of Marzabotto, just south of Bologna.  We visited an archeological area, but found it hard to make heads or tails out of the visible and the museum was, of course, closed for the requisite midday rest.

We found the parking garage closest to our apartment in Bologna, which is in the traffic-restricted Centro Storico, and walked the few blocks to our apartment on a narrow street lined with the porticoes that characterize the city.  Almost all the streets in the historic center are lined with covered arcades, known here as porticoes, and they are just lovely.  Many have frescoed ceilings, and all have graceful arches and, of course, protection from the weather, which we did not need on this gorgeous day.

After checking in to yet another winner of an apartment, we went for a walk to the central square, the Piazza Maggiore, stopped at the TI, visited the huge duomo, and just wandered the very high-end shopping streets, where some of the window displays of food are as enticing as the jewelry and leather goods nearby.

After happy hour at home, we walked to a restaurant that Tommaso, our friend from Martina Franca, had recommended.  En route, we walked through the university area, with many of the classroom buildings housed in old palazzi that line the porticoed streets.  There were students everywhere, with crowds of them sitting, talking, and just “being” in a large piazza. We were most certainly the only non-Italians at Trattoria da Vito, which was well off the tourist track and it was nice to be among the locals.  Mary Ellen’s roast rabbit was so good that Tom has begun to have designs on the many bunnies that seem to have overrun our neighborhood at home!