Literary Verona

Our final stop on the Italian leg of our journey northward took us to the city of Verona, made famous by a little story you may have heard of called 'Romeo and Juliet.' One hour, 45 minutes away from Bologna, we were greeted with another medieval city even less busy than the one we'd just left. First glimpses did not disappoint.

We considered this a wonderful thing and checked into the very charming B&B King on the outskirts of town. The couple who owned the B&B provided us local recommendations, maps, bikes and fresh homemade focaccia for breakfast. The benefits of being slightly out of centre was that Verona felt very lived in for us. And the city is still very walkable with lots of vantage points and places to perch; we lived a good, slow pace for a few more days.

Our first stop was at the Osteria da Morendin, a local restaurant that looked one part pub and one part your grandmother's kitchen; moving towards the back of the establishment revealed checkered tablecloths and plates as wall decoration. Specials change daily and seasonally and are all written on a chalkboard. Gemma got accidentally brave and ordered the bigoli con asino, a straw-like spaghetti noodle with minced donkey meat. I ordered a tortellini stuffed with blackberries in a red wine reduction. The food was different, good, but not in a way we'd necessarily order either dish again. 

All carbed up, we made our way into Verona proper where the obvious draw lies in all things Shakespeare. From statues to signs to museums, the city does well to trade on its name. 

The bulk of tourists to Verona spend their time in the historic centre and although the story of Romeo and Juliet is entirely fictional but that didn't stop the local council from building a balcony and declaring a house on Via Cappello as 'Juliet's House.' 

Despite how it may seem, the courtyard was teeming with tourists and their cameras. And the passageway to said courtyard is covered in artifices of love: graffiti, bike locks, sticky notes and, perhaps more worryingly, chewing gum. 

The tradition of sending letters to Juliet was immortalised in a 2010 film starring Amanda Seyfried and is steeped in reality. It dates back hundreds of years when people started leaving love notes on what was said to be Juliet's tomb. Then people started sending letters to the city itself. Finally, in the 1990s, the city set up an office to deal with, and reply to, the letters. Around 6000 letters are sent a year and a team of 15 women reply to them in a smattering of languages. NPR wrote a fascinating article you can read here. 

Just down the road, lies fictional Romeo's house. It's less popular, less graffiti-ridden but still there as a stop on the R&J trail.

And thus ended our Shakespeare sightseeing tour roughly 20 minutes after it started. More interestingly, we passed through the city, stopping by the Arena, the world's third largest surviving amphitheatre. In the summer, it's host to evening opera. We milled about one evening, grabbing snippets of the beautiful songs that wafted through the open air.

In Piazza dei Signori there's plenty of places to stop and enjoy a drink, the architecture, the outdoor market selling a range of food, clothing and bizarre wooden toys. 

The Lamberti Tower is the tallest tower in Verona and costs 8 Euro to visit. For an extra euro, you can circumvent the stairs and take the lift to the top. We did neither but apparently the views are good. We'd get better views the next day so we didn't miss out on much.

It probably goes without saying that we had a cursory wander around the piazza before finding places of respite. This took the form of: pizza, granitas, aperol spritzes under an umbrella during the brief rainstorm.

To me, there's no better way to spend a perfect July day.

The Food of Bologna

The Emilia-Romagna region of Italy is home to some of Italy's most delightful exports, parmesan, balsamic vinegar and tortellini, to name a few. Bologna, being smack in the middle of this region, claims quite a few famous powerhouses itself. Most namely, ragu sauce (never served on spaghetti), mortadella and lasagne verdi. 

Luckily for us, just off the Piazza Maggiore, we discovered a labyrinth of narrow, pedestrianised streets that offer up the city's delicacies at cut rate prices. Each shop front also doubled as a cafe and from noon until the late afternoon, tables were crammed with locals and tourists alike, sampling Bologna's meats, cheeses and pasta dishes. Couples, friends and families took their time; wait staff encouraged their patrons to enjoy. Even in wandering the pavements and making a choice, I had one of those bliss-filled perfect moments.

Because a bad decision didn't seem possible, Gemma and I situated ourselves at Vecchia Malga, a family run delicatessen and cafe that specialised in mega plates of meat and cheese. You choose the region and they provide you with a sampling of the highlights. I can't tell you everything that's on the plates below. But I can tell you that the combination of burrata, honey and sundried tomatoes made me think about taking up residence in Bologna permanently. 

Two hours later, we floated (sank) out on a cloud of cheese, meat and wine. And despite vowing to return to this little tastebud heaven, we ran out of time. But we did sample the many pastas of Bologna during the rest of our time here, making our way to tiny trattorias on the outskirts of town. Gemma got her bolognese, I drank the wine.

And it inspired in me a desire to return to this culinary corner of the world. To bring Paul. And my fat pants. 

Bologna

I start my backdating summer reverie in Bologna, the city I was in exactly one year ago today (8 July 2019). Gemma and I landed here on the midpoint of our brief Italian wanders; we gratefully left a busy, tourist-filled two-days in Florence behind. And although it's difficult not to love the antiquity and beauty of that city, it's hardly easy to find a moment's relaxation when you're dodging groups of umbrella and flag wielding tour groups.

A mere 45-minute train ride away, Bologna was the breath of fresh (but still hot and humid) air we were looking for. It's hardly a secret and yet, the hordes were absent. We were greeted with a beautiful city steeped in sunlight, excellent food and classical architecture. So, you know, like every other beautiful Italian city you've ever wanted to visit.

After the initial hunt to find our B&B, a quirky place on the edges of the centre, we bade farewell to our garrulous owner and made for the city.

Piazza Maggiore

We got our bearings in the Piazza Maggiore, Bologna's central square. 

In every direction, we found something beautiful. Two 13th century palazzos, the Fountain of Neptune straight on and the historic public library all within our eye-line.

We came to find this out later in the day when, whilst waiting for a phone call from my sister to relay some big news, we were approached by a university student and her camera man. She wrote for a local newspaper and wanted to offer her free services as a tour guide in exchange for an interview: why do tourists come to Bologna? 

She was so kind, so smiley, that it was impossible to say no. And so we found ourselves in a comical situation where an overly exuberant Italian man closely tailed us through the piazza snap, snap, snapping away. But this is also how we got a great tour of antique Bologna, making our way into Basilica di San Petronio. Despite its epic exterior, which I, ironically, don't have a picture of, this is only a minor church of the city (merely the sixth largest in Europe). We weren't even planning on going in but our tour guide convinced us to check out the splendour and controversy.

Basilica di San Petronio

Inside, inspiring our earth science nerdy brains, laid Giovanni Cassini's meridian line, the longest indoor meridian line in the world.  To quote Wikipedia: The sun light, entering through a 27.07 mm hole placed at a 27.07m height in the church wall, projects an elliptical image of the sun, which at local noon falls exactly on the meridian line and every day is different as to position and size. The position of the projected image along the line allows to determine accurately the daily altitude of the sun at noon, from which Cassini was able to calculate with unprecedented precision astronomical parameters such as the obliquity of the ecliptic, the duration of the tropical year and the timing of equinoxes and solstices. 

Yep, we didn't implicitly understand that either which definitely made it even more fascinating. And just around the corner from this, in the Chapel of the Magi, one of the basilica's 22 chapels, lies a fresco created by Giovanni da Modena. Inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, the piece depicts the nine circles of hell. And although Lucifer dominates the piece, Mohamed is also depicted in the ninth circles which prompted a 2002 failed Al Qaida plot to blow the fresco up. To this day, military personnel guard the basilica with their rather large guns and entry to thisparticular chapel carries a £3 fee.

University of Bologna and the Jewish Ghetto 

We eventually bid farewell to our entourage and made for food (there's a whole other post just dedicated to that) and other parts of the city. Sadly, I have few pictures from this wander--my phone was on its last legs and I had to conserve energy. But we did find the University of Bologna territory. Founded in 1088, it is the world's oldest university and the place where the term Alma Mater was coined. So there's that. 

On the way, we came across the Two Tours, today a ubiquitous symbol of Bologna. But they also serve as a reminder that pissing contests are not exclusive to our modern times. The towers, named Asinelli and Garisenda, after the two prominent families who built them, were built some time between 1109 and 1119. The families were in competition as to who was the more powerful and so one tower is taller whilst the other leans just a little bit more than the other. Who won? The women who had nothing to do with building either of these. 

The streets surrounding this part of town are home to student haunts and drinking spots. They're also home to the Jewish ghetto for a short time, historically speaking. From 1556 to 1593 Pope Paul IV decreed that
Jews be strictly segregated from the neighbouring Catholics. Nice guy. The streets are narrow, winding and today, home to the Jewish Museum, amongst other homages to the original denizens.

With two days in the city and questionable weather, we didn't get the most out of wandering around Bologna. The food is a different story and entry entirely. More on that to come.

Florence

Beautiful Firenze is a wonder of a city and a place that bears a visit. UNESCO has deemed the city centre a World Heritage Site and with 60% of the world's art heritage, there's an abundance to take in. 16 million tourists a year pound the city's pavements. And so: one visit is probably enough. And non-summer is a better time to go. 

Technically, I've already had my one Florence visit. Back in 2007 I traversed these streets on a hot August, travelling with Natalie and Sophie, the former, a summer camp friend and the latter my MA housemate. They're both people packed with lots of personality and I'm surprised we didn't all kill each other. We'd arrived in Florence after a hot, sweaty stay in Rome and stayed in an unremarkable hostel, unremarkable in that I have no clear memory of this place so it must have been absolutely fine. 

My 2007 self loved the city, its architecture, statues and gelato. My 2019 self still loved all these things but loathed the hordes and hordes of tourists. But you can't control when/where friends get married or the fact that teachers get a bulk of their holiday in the summer months so Gemma and I made the most of a 2-day rest stop on the way to Sweden via Munich via Italy.

Upsides: the journey from Pisa to Florence is 1 hr, 15 minutes on a cheap, air conditioned train. With regularly paying jobs, you can book a decent hotel. And so we arrived, took to wandering the backstreets and avoiding the main piazza, all the while taking in gelato recommendations from locals. For example: Procopino, an award winning local gelateria on one of the city's backstreets:

So good, we went back for more.

And as much as we wanted to complain about wading through bodies with limited spatial awareness, you can't argue with the beauty of the Duomo.

And the comparative empty of the city's other streets and piazzas:

The Ponte Vecchio, from a distance, is quite peaceful:

And when you put your mind to avoiding the crowds, this city has lots and lots of little gems. It's artistically self-deprecating:

I spent more time than I care to admit in the Piazza della Signoria getting the angle of this right:

And the city does an amazing granita:

And any city with a street-side photobooth is a city for me:

We even found a little piece of China tucked away:

And perhaps my favourite gem of a find in the city of art were these little bricked up Buchettas de Vino (direct translation--wine holes):

Historical records attest to the functionality of these waist height and lower windows throughout Florence's city centre that served as wine dispensaries in the 17th century. The upheavals in the European market forced aristocratic families to come up with better ways to make money, and so discreetly dispensing wine on the streets of the city became common practice. Some of these wine holes were also repositories for charity and rich families would leave food/wine to the needy of the city. Either way, this felt more like the 'real' Florence to me. 

So this might not be your typical 'Florence, what a beautiful city!' blog post. That's fine, I think there's enough of that out there. And, to be very honest, we didn't want to experience the typical Florence. We walked in the midday heat; we stopped into an Irish pub playing the women's World Cup Final; we stayed far, far away from tourist central. And that felt perfect to us. 

An Italian Hen Party

Stop one on the Summer of Love took me to Pisa, a rather unconventional place for an extended stay, let alone a hen party. Pisa has its charms: it's a university town, it has a tower that leans. But it's fairly small and a little rough around the edges. All this aside, I've probably flown from this airport more than any other mainland European airport due to its cheap flight hub and proximity of airport to city. 

The decision to host a hen do in Pisa was made wholly because people were coming from five different places in four different countries and not a lot of Italian airports can do direct flights from Paris.London.Manchester.Copenhagen.Southern Italy.

I won't bore you with the logistics but there's a lot of drama in trying to organise 10 people who live all around the world. 10 eventually dwindled to six and when we arrived in-country the palazzo that we unknowingly rented seemed just a little too big. And motherfucking haunted. 

The house was located on the outskirts of the city, a supposed 20-minute walk to the Leaning Tower. I doubt the truth of this claim. Outside, a very welcome swimming pool meant that we could sip copious gin and tonics in relative comfort.

Downstairs we were greeted with two sitting rooms, two dining rooms, a women's sitting room (pink couches, why??) and a huge kitchen.

 And a ton of plates stuck to the wall:

Questionable artwork lined the walls of the entire house; the portraits on the landing of the stairs were particularly nightmare-inducing.

Upstairs, six large bedrooms and two bathrooms waited to be occupied. Technically this meant that we could all have our own rooms. Practically, I lasted five-minutes before I begged Gemma to share a room with me. I mean, just look at this room, the one we dubbed 'the psych ward.'

It didn't help that some of the doors were equipped with bank safe style locks and one of the corridors had a door with deadbolts in order to lock the occupants of two rooms behind it. It goes without saying that I have an overactive imagination and I was the kid who had to be picked up from sleepovers after someone cracked open the scary stories. Suffice it to say, I slept very poorly for the whole long weekend.

Wine Tasting in Lucca
Fortunately, the days were filled with lots of relaxation. Our only real adventure out of the haunted mansion was to do a cycling wine tasting tour in Lucca. Our guide, a lovely woman decked in cycling clothes, took us 23 kilometres over the city walls and outside of the city.

We were sweaty messes by the time we arrived at the Bio-organic winery. The proprietor took the whole experience a lot more seriously than we did and we ended up being the rowdy young 'uns at the table of compliant tourists. Oops. 

Another sweaty cycle back took us to Lucca, a place Paul and I visited (and one I STILL need to blog) on holiday six years ago. It's a stunning place all enclosed in ancient city walls. After ditching our bikes and thanking our wonderful guide, we stumbled into a little cheese and salumeria just in the central piazza, eventually working our way into a fit of drunken giggles.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa
We then took a baking hot walk through the hottest part of the day and gave up shortly after realising that we were the only real idiots out. One short train back to Pisa, we then decided that it was now or never with the Tower.

I can't remember the last time I've laughed this hard. We must have taken over 100 pictures, trying to hold the pose, capture the angle correctly.

We spent much of the rest of the three days in the pool or in the kitchen, preparing epic feasts of local cheese, meat, pasta and fresh vegetables. 

We taught Petra's senior citizen mum how to play Cards Against Humanity. We laughed a lot. We enjoyed the fact that despite living in five different countries, we were able to pick up where we left off. It was an entirely unconventional, entirely wonderful way to spend a hen do. 

Summer 2019: The Summer of Love

All of a sudden and yet again, the summer has come and almost gone. And yet again, I've become lax (read: non-existent) at the updating process. I'd like to say that life gets in the way and, to a degree, this is true. But the Google gods have also made the process of uploading pictures one step more onerous and it becomes easy to stay lazy. And in an epic teacher summer holidays, it becomes easy to watch the entire series of Gilmore Girls for the third, fourth, fifth time.

So here we are back in London after an epic summer of matrimonial adventures. Others, not mine. In the whole affair of being an International Person, the reunions are the cherry on top of what can sometimes be the experience of window shopping for cake. You get me: looks delicious, know it's delicious, but are separated by a pane of glass. 

This summer I got to eat the cake, see the friends and sweat in the Italian/Greek/Swedish sun in the process. The first adventure took us to Pisa for Clare's (Shanghai friend) multi-national Hen Do. Multinational in that friends flew from Manchester, London, Sweden, Vietnam and China to be there. It was not without its logistical dramas and its last minute drop outs. But ultimately, three days poolside was just what the doctor ordered. 

To make it more multinational, post-hen do, Gemma and I made our way up-continent, as one is able to do in Europe, weaving our way through Florence, Bologna, Verona and Munich before boarding a flight for Copenhagen, hiring a car, picking up Paul and crossing the bridge (that will break your bank account for years to come) into Sweden. There, we found ourselves in the tiny village of Rostaga for Clare and Roland's wedding. Adding one final level of internationalness, Clare, a Northern Englander, married Roland, a Hungarian, 18-months after they met in Malmo. Yep, I love it. Our journey ended in Copenhagen three days later when Paul and I made our way back to London. 

Two weeks later, my friend Gil (Taiwanese name: Kuan Yin) married her long-time love, George (Greek name: Giorgios) in a traditional Greek Orthodox ceremony in a seaside suburb of Athens. After lots of vigourous circle dancing and souvlaki, we then made our way to the delicious, delicious islands, taking in Naxos and Paros in the Cyclades for ten days of sun and sea. 

In between all of that, I've taken in the best of what British Rail has to offer and made my way to Whitstable, Deal, Bletchley, Arlesey. We've been fairly lucky in dodging heat delays, rain delays, wind delays in the process. 

It's been everything I could ask for in a summer. Which means the coming school year is going to hit me like a ton of bricks when the alarm goes off late next week. Sigh.