ITALY: Arriving in BOLOGNA and our train trip to see the “LEANING TOWER OF PISA”.

Arriving into Bologna it was just on dark.  And unfortunately we don’t fancy arriving at night time because we seem to get a little disorientated.  When it’s light at least we get the opportunity to observe different landmarks and give us a sense of our bearings.  Right there and then it was only a little bit of a problem.  As fate would have it across the road from the station were a variety of restaurants, gelatarias and cafes (making a mental note - ones that we HAD to visit over the next few days ). 

Nightfall in Bologna

So outside in the glow of the station lights we stood there distracted by the eateries, cafes and restaurants, shaking ourselves off from the excitement of having a real Spaghetti Bolognaise.  We finally made our way to 4 Viale Angelo Masini, less than 500 metres from the train station.  Settled in and headed straight back down the road across from the station with only the thoughts of ….Spag Bog for dinner, Gelati for dessert.  Ahhh!  authentic Italian!  

The choice was difficult because there quite a few to choose from, even a Chinese café a little further down.  We’ll make that one tomorrow night.

Having heard and read about all the good things about Bologna we knew we would need a few days to look around and see the sites because the architecture here is unbelievable and a must-see.  In any event we needed to set aside a full day for a trip to see the ”Leaning Tower of Pisa” too. 

The famous "Leaning Tower of Pisa"

 It was “do-able” – and early TOMORROW in fact.  The trip would take around 2 and a half hours all up allowing for a train change in Firenze Rifredi, to Empoli then on to Pisa.  Maybe a little longer on the way back to Bologna because we’d be travelling on a different route stopping in Prato.  All good.

Well you wouldn’t believe it !  At our first stop we looked up to see 2 women who were standing in the carriage doorway, looking left to right, and we heard one of them mention something about “Turistas”.  Then only one of them hopped off.  We thought they were checking out the seating arrangements.  NO!!  The one who stayed on the train (it was obvious she was Gypsy), starting walking down the aisles as the train pulled out of the station leaving little cut-out Notes on the arm rests of each occupied seat.  Our instinct was to leave it there.  Tony was curious.  The Note read –“ I am a single mother with 3 children, I do not have a home, I have no money.  I care for my 2 younger brothers and we have no food.  Pray for Us”.  It was now obvious that they were sussing out who was on the train ie. “Turistas” and if there were any Rail Police on board between stations.   

Well, Luvvy!  If you are in such a difficult circumstance – how on earth do you manage to print out enough notes on your electricity powered computer, enough to fill 6 train carriages.  Don’t even get me started about the kids being left alone somewhere…because they haven’t got a home !!!

Before we reached the next station she’d returned rattling her plastic cup into the faces of the passengers saying something about her plight and with the best Hollywood tears you would ever see.  Almost everyone, including us, avoided eye contact or just waved her away as she collected her little notes.  When the Rail Police were spotted boarding at the next station, in true Hollywood fashion the tears disappeared and she high tailed it off the train. “Pray for Us” – Pray we will - that we don’t have to encounter this again!

 

Early Morning in Pisa



Being Sunday morning, it was quiet in the streets of Pisa (people still in mass?) and we were enjoying our relaxing stroll keeping an eye out for directional maps of how to get to the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The Tower

That was until……..!! 

You see, there was this seedy long haired (mullet cut) guy slowly riding his bicycle up fairly close and keeping pace with us.  (The Mullet Cut should have been enough to make us suspicious!)  As we moved to the side of the street so did he on his bike.  He followed us for a fair way then tried to strike up a conversation.  We knew it wasn’t just normal conversation – it was an asking type of tone like – “Do you have cigarettes or money?”  Thank goodness we couldn’t understand any Italian.  We just waved him away, as you do – it works with the Gypsies.  And seriously we couldn’t understand anything he was saying.  And he just kept on at us – riding along on his bicycle babbling away.  And besides we thought he probably couldn’t understand us either.  Then he started raising his voice – then I heard him say THAT WORD,  the one I learnt from the subtitles of the late night SBS TV Italian movies.  You know that one …. the “F – word”.

(WARNING:  The following comments you are about to read contain Adult Themes, Sexual References and only suitable for Mature Audiences).  This mullet haired, stalker bicycle rider told us – in his best Italian to - “F ** K-Off”. 

On hearing that, me now getting angry, my reaction was to tell him to “F ** K-Off” in English.  And I did.  I wasn’t going to have anyone talk to me like that, either was Tony (but he was oblivious to what this guy said anyway).  Imagine the look on Tony’s face when I blurted it out.  He momentarily stood there motionless.  The funny part about this is… You know what “Mr Mullet” said back?  In good old plain ENGLISH, (English, can you believe?) he replied, “Well You  F ** K Off too!!”  And rode his bike away.  LOL, LOL. 

Tony and I laughed so hard I think we must have shamed this bloke so much after our little exchange of “F” words he didn’t even turn back to look at us.  

Still laughing we made it to the “Leaning Tower of Pisa” only to find that the streets back in the city were quiet because everyone seemed to be at the tower site. 

Entrance into the Tower Site

Seriously, there were hundreds of people there snapping photos, taking videos, trying to make out like they were pushing the tower back into place.  Did we do that?  Sure!  Do you know how stupid it really looks doing that?  Sure, just look at the photo!  There were so many people everywhere that there is no way in the world you can have a photo taken on your own.  Does anyone know what the phrase is for “Multiple” Photo-Bombs.  


Let's try stop it from falling over !!!













Market Stalls inside the site

 

Our time at the Tower of Pisa was spent walking around and reading the various plaques explaining how this phenomenon has come to be, the stabilisation and engineering of the site over the years and us taking lots and lots of photos. 



Market Stalls Outside the Walls to the site

We ventured over to the market stalls, the outside of the ancient walls only to find more  markets that we just as crowded...and they all sold everything imaginable with the Leaning Tower of Pisa on it – Tea Towels, Key rings, T-shirts, Little Leaning Towers of Pisa, Table cloths, more Tea Towels and T-shirts.  All this leaning stuff was making us dizzy.   

We had seen enough!  Dare we venture back into the streets way of bicycle riders?  Yep but we didn’t get hassled this time.  Instead we just took our time enjoying the views over the River Arno and some of the magnificent doorways and amazing, and sometime creepy looking,  door knockers. 

Tony and Liz and the Leaning Tower of Pisa

Views over the River Arno

Door Knocker in Pisa

More Leaning Tower photos

  

WOW !

Tomorrow our Italian adventure continues back in Bologna.  The doors are closed on this one!!

Stylish Door in Pisa

See ya. 

Liz and Tony



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ITALY: Our Interesting Train Trip from ROME to BOLOGNA

We weren’ sure what Bologna would be like but having been given lots of great reviews and web links about the city from Alison and Rob, who had travelled there the previous year as part of Rob’s PhD funding, we were far from disappointed.  

 

Essentially Bologna is a small city with a population of just under 400,000 and what stood out for us was the food, wine, cheeses, olives and other fresh produce (mouth watering) and where Bolognaise and Bologna sausage originated.  More famously it is noted for its culture, art, history, learning centre and medieval architecture, markets and high end shopping.  

The Historical Centre, surrounded by Circon Vallazione (Ring Road) is a ZTL ie. Restricted Traffic Area with the very centre closed off to traffic 24 hours a day except for emergency vehicles.  And who doesn’t love Pedestrian friendly zones especially when it comes to sightseeing and doing the tourist thing.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna)

 

For us we have around 4 hours on the train to look forward to including a short stopover in Florence for about 15-20 minutes to change trains.  And as usual, being the cautious and always guarded travellers that we are, it goes without saying that we have a story to tell about this train journey.  

When we say “guarded”, for us it means looking out for each other, keeping our bags with us at all times, looking out for pickpockets and gypsy scammers who prey on the most unsuspecting people.  Upon leaving Rome this young scruffy woman walks down the aisle struggling with a “super huge” piece of luggage.  Behind her is an American bloke telling her to put it between the seats.  Turns out - the luggage was his, and the girl (yes, she was a Gypsy) had asked him for money in exchange for carrying his bag onto the train.  Fair enough you might think. 

But wait!  Like most long distance trains, the “Intercity” train we were travelling on has a Baggage Area as you hop into the carriage.  Beyond that are the seats.  People freely use the baggage areas because the overhead luggage racks are narrow or folks have more baggage than will fit at their feet or overhead.  Well, we didn’t really have a problem with the “Money in Exchange for carrying Luggage” arrangement EXCEPT… once on the train, Gypsies have been known to make a dash off the carriage with someone else’s luggage from the Baggage Area in the moments before the train leaves that station.  If distracted travellers don’t realise their luggage is missing until they get to their destination…and that could be hours later.  What we objected to was that this guy “ALLOWED” the girl to get onto the train and there was an opportunity for her.  As far as we know the opportunity didn’t happen, and Florence wasn’t the last stop for this train.  Probably better that we didn’t know either!  But we had to change trains at Firenze Centrale for Bologna regardless.

This time the train from Firenze to Bologna was more like one of the old “Red Rattlers”, and just like those from back in the day, we had to share our compartment.  Probably only one of the downsides of “free” train trips on Eurail Passes, but who is complaining? Besides it’s a good way of meeting people and striking up interesting conversations (…nice change instead of us yabbering on with each other all the time).

In saying that, we’ve met some really friendly people in shared train spaces.  This trip was no exception.  After settling into our seats, thinking we had the whole 6-berth to ourselves it wasn’t long before we were joined by the Diez family from Medellin, Columbia - Dad, Mum, daughter Adriana and son David.  There was no awkwardness at all and in a short time we had struck up conversations with Adriana and David who had a good command of English (and for us to practice our limited Spanish with Mum and Dad).  They had all been on business to Milan.  And we were assured that their “business” trip to Italy was related to their clothing trade in Medellin.  The sad part about meeting the Diez family was the short train trip because we could have talked much longer, forever…. and we could have easily bypassed Bologna station.  We look forward to our email exchanges and for some of those Columbian recipes.  Una hermosa familia, tales.

***   Memo to Self: Add MEDILLIN, COLUMBIA to our bucket list. ( PS. The Bucket is now the size of a 44-gallon drum).

  

And so the Travel Adventures continue.  Next from Bologna.  See Ya.

Liz and Tony

Bologna Centrale by Day

ITALY: NAPLES back to ROME and beyond....TO BOLOGNA

Colosseum

After an exhausting day trekking around Pompeii we were looking forward to getting back into the air-con, to having a nice dinner and a relaxing evening before heading back to Rome in the morning around 11 o’clock.  In the lead up time to checking out of Hotel Tiempo we were psyching ourselves up for the walk to the station – mentally chanting “We can do this… We can do this…”.  At least now we knew our way around this area and which sides of the streets to walk on to avoid the rubbish….or so we thought!!

What we didn’t expect was that almost overnight more rubbish seemed to have appeared in the same street as the hotel.  Remember I said in our earlier blog about some “just disgusting” rubbish that we saw.  Now has come the time to say what it was.  As painful as it is to mention….and we hope it doesn’t put you off our Travel Adventures blogs because this is REAL…the comments you are about to read are REAL!! 

Tiber River, Rome

Here goes…..  What we were talking about was a couple of large green heavy duty garbage bags that had split and the contents strewn over the street….it was CONDOMS - used, small, large, different colours, different textures and in different stages of disintegration.  Very confronting!  YUK!  Did I mention it was disgusting.  Maybe once (well maybe 3 times).  What sort of a dirty grub would do that.  Thinking - at different times in our travels we were worried about getting chewing gum, or heaven forbid – Dog Poo stuck on the wheels of our luggage.  How would we explain Condoms rolling around on our wheels? LOL.  Guess it confirms that not only do the Mafia have a strangle hold on the waste disposable contracts, they have a grip on the brothel trade too!  It had to be from a brothel – and about a years (or several years) supply at that.  Just disgusting (OK the word has been mentioned 4 times now).  Suffice to say I DID NOT TAKE A PHOTO.

Goodbye Naples.  We will always remember our visit here….Yeah, for all the WRONG reasons!

Back in Rome and back to the same apartment block where the (WRONG) key was broken in the key hole, we were greeted with a NEW one together with a nice note and some change from our English/Italian speaking Nepalese host about the replacement for the broken one from our last stay here a few days ago.

Our first priority though was to get to the supermarket for some fresh lunch goodies, but Tony insisted…and twisted my arm…and stood his ground…that we should go down to the other supermarket for some of that delicious Gelati we’d tried days before.  Who was I to refuse, besides it was still hot and ice-cream seemed like a good excuse to cool down?  That aside we also needed to get a few snacks for the train trip to Bologna tomorrow.  

Most Delicious Gelati in Italy

 At Roma Termini the next day there were still the long queues of people wanting to buy tickets, the touts who wanted to help people buy their tickets (and scam them out of their cash), the travellers, and the gypsies (who also wanted to scam people out of their cash).  

Trenitalia Ticket Office queues at
Roma Termini

But first we had to stop in for some souvenirs, like T-shirts and the blood red coloured wooden Rosary Beads spotted in shop windows during our walks…the red ones that smell like roses with a picture of Pope John Paul II on the front - just have to have them, along with that cute little black summer dress too! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II)   



Those Must-have Rosary Beads




In the meantime Tony had already managed  to sneak in a couple of Owls to add to his collection.  Very cute!
 

Alabaster Owls



And so our Travel Adventures continue.  Who knows what's about to happen on our train trip from Rome to Bologna.  Keep you posted.  Till then.....

Liz and Tony

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