Bologna: time to try some Spaghetti Bolog... al Ragu?

Richard eating Spaghetti al Ragu
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Bologna is the home of Spaghetti al Ragù (what us plebs call Spaghetti Bolognese) as well as Lasagne. Needless to say, I have been looking forward to our one night stay here.

When we arrived, we went straight to the first restaurant we could find in the main square. Inside, the only person to speak to me responded to my question of "do you speak English?" (spoken in Italian!) with "no" and did not attempt to further the conversation. Moving along to the restaurant next door, we are greeted with none other than an Australian woman who lives in Italy. Not only did she give us the recipe for ragù sauce when we left, but she even offered to get us some pavlova for dessert! Its not every day you get offered pavlova in Italy. If the tagliatelle al ragù wasn't such a huge serving I'd have taken her up on the offer.

Its not every day you get offered pavlova in Italy

San Petronio Basilica in Piazza Maggiore
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After lunch, we checked out the very massive, and very much unfinished, San Petronio Basilica. In fact, the basilica is one of the biggest in the world.

It started to rain, so we decided to grab a coffee and wait for the rain to subside before we went to visit the two towers. It didn't. On the contrary, it got considerably worse. In the end we decided to skip the towers (there would have been no view) and just check in. That's where the real fun began.

Statue of Neptune in the Piazza Nettuno (behind Piazza Maggiore)
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Upon arrival we were informed by the owner (it was a guest house) that due to "water problems" we were not able to stay in the room we had booked. Whether "water problems" meant "water problems" or "someone else has booked for longer than you" I'll let you decide for yourself. Regardless, the woman was very nice about it and had organised us to stay in a place "just out of town" and would even pay for the taxi. The place was definitely not "just out of town", it was a 15 minute drive up on a hill overlooking the town, but I'm kind of glad we went there. The place we stayed it is, I assume, normally more expensive than we paid. We got a private room in a very "green" (lots of gardens) guest house with a breathtaking view of Bologna. Sure it wasn't 2 minutes walk from the train station (the reason we booked the original place), but it definitely made for a great place to stay.

I promise to use less quotes in my future posts.