Bravo Bologna

Due Torri
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Well our last day in Italy was spent in Bologna. I wasnt sure what to expect from this city but i was pleasantly surprised!  Bologna is a lovely Medival city, It's very clean and there are lots of quirky little squares and churches. I actually prefered it to Florence! It is most famous for it's food "bolognase" I did sample plenty of pasta and pizza whilst staying there. There are plenty of restaurants reasonably priced and lots of cafe and gelati shops yum yum!!

me at the top after the long climb!!!
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Nicky and i pulled on our trainers and took to the Bologna streets. It's real easy to get around and pretty compact. We went into the church San Petrino which looks totally bizarre from the outside. The reason being when it was being built they ran out of money! The church was intended to be bigger that St Peters in Rome but they had to built a university instead(fair enough) So the bottom half of the church is made of marble and the top half of brick! This gives it a gothic look,pretty cool!  It's free to go inside and worth a look too. It's a lovely church and its weird to see where construction has just stopped and stain glass windows only half finished!!

Gothic splendour

Piazza Maggoire
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My favourite part of Bologna are the Due Torri. This is two towers,the Torre degli Asinelli and the Torre Garisenda. The latter leans as much as the Leaning Tower in Pisa 3.2m tilt and the Torre Asinelli has a 1.3 lean!! What is it with the Italians, can't they build straight towers haha!! Us being us we went to investigate whether we could climb either of these towers. Low and behold we could yipeeeeeee. Torre Asinelloi is the only tower you can climb-typical its the taller of the two! Once again there were no queues to climb the tower, though once we started we realised why!! It was a bloody long climb! 97.6m-high!it's not advisable for the weak-kneed (there are 498 steps) or superstitious students (local lore says if you climb the tower you'll never graduate). Built by the Asinelli family between 1109 and 1119- it's pretty dam old!  The stairs to the top are all wooden and dont feel the safest but hey ho once you've started the climb there is no going back! Luckily there are 2 small landings where you can take a quick breather. We knew we were nearly at the summit when we felt the chilling winds brhhhhhhhhhh but i was sweating my ass off from the climb so welcomed the biting breeze! Wow the views from the top are awesome! It is all barred in like a prison cell but i dont blame the Italains as you sure as hell don't want blown off the top of here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We didnt hang around for very long as it was blinking baltic!! Shame there wasn't a firemans pole to get us back down to the bottom-that would have been fun hehe!  Back on the ground with lactic acid legs we went for food and refeshments. I had to have the ravioli and gelati yum yum

the wooden stairs
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Before we headed back to the airport we did a quick bit of shopping. I'm not a big shopper but the shops here are brilliant and have every shop you can imagine. I made a wee purchase in an Italian shop, nice wee jumper.

I would defo go back to Bologna, Would be nice to visit in the summer and take in teh seaside town of Rimini too which isnt too far away. see am always thinking of my next trip haha

So once again i had a fantastic time in Italy. It's one of my favourite countries alongside Fiji,Canada,Thailand and Japan.  12 weeks until my next trip ....... 2 1/2 weeks in Canada for the Garnd Prix and my birthday yipeee can't wait to go back- Ciao