Ravenna-City of Tiny Tiny Tiles

Buon Giorno! (Howdy!)
After a hearty breakfast of Nutella at the hotel we are off for our day trip to Ravenna.

We figured out how to use the ticket machines at the train station. That made us very proud of ourselves.

And hour later and look! (You thought we wouldn't make it didn't you?)

Ravenna is chock full of really old churches, and I'm not talking Rennaissance here people. When I say old I mean old. 6th century old. Like gettin' all Byzantine on your ass!
So here is one called San Giovanni Evangelista (no relation to Linda).

Only slightly newer is this delicious invention. Because triangular pizza is SO over.

Here's the church that everyone comes to Ravenna to see: San Vitale.
Now I know it just looks like a big brown thing on the outside, but you just wait.

Cue the choir singing, "AHHHHHH"

You thought painting your ceilings was a pain in the neck.

There were these dudes with attitude.

Cute. But the real reason these churches are so special are the mosaics. I'm talking like crazy complicated, burn your retinas out putting it together, mosaics. They are impressive!

That is all made of little tiny stone tiles. Oh look, there's a cute little goat!

More dudes in mosaic.

This dude's standing way to close to that fire...

12 dudes. (I think they're called apostles.)

Translate that and you win $50.

Sadly, the yarn shop was closed.

So we had to settle for Dante's final resting place instead, which was open.

Buon giorno Signor Alighieri!

We bid a quick farewell to Garibaldi and were off to catch the train back to Bologna.

Now on to more important matters. Finding gelato.

Soccer Fans Are Nuts

So that was not the end of that whole "Bologna wins the football game and everyone stands around for an hour blowing airhorns" thing. Oh no. This is what we came out to find a couple hours later.

This picture does not do the whole scene justice, which is why I ran up to the room and grabbed the ole Flip Ultra.

So the crowd was having a great time lighting smoke bombs and waving their flags around. Then, the actual team rolled up in their bus which threw everyone into a football frenzy (I even caught a souvenir postcard). Don't ask me why they use the 20th Century Fox theme song to introduce themselves. Notice the cute dogs enjoying the action.


P.S. Did I mention what an evil place Italy was? Allow me to reiterate.

My Bologna Has a First Name...

Our first official day in Bologna because, let's face it, yesterday was a shadowy blur.
Lots of stuff to see so let's get going!
This is what we see when we look out our window: a lovely little pedestrian street.

Just a block down is the Piazza Maggiore (The Majorly Big Plaza). It's where everyone in Bologna comes to meet, chat, riot and show off their cute little doggies.



It's also where they apparently celebrate football victories. They all stand around and blow air horns for an hour. Today we found out that they beat Pisa. Yea Bologna! Boo Pisa!!!

Located in the Piazza is this impressive fountain of Neptune. Nice abs.

Below Neptune are these gals. They shoot water out of their boobies.

Bologna is a beautiful city known for it's red buildings and porticos. You can walk miles completely sheltered by these graceful arches with marble walkways underfoot. It's really lovely.

And if you're going to have a McDonald's why not have it under one of these wonderful porticos? Almost makes you want to go in for a BigMac.

Helloooooo...

We took the tour bus up to the hills section of the city. It left us there with instructions to walk down the lovely paths to the next bus stop and enjoy the views. The views were lovely, but the paths were non-existent so we walked along the road and came to the next bus stop. Unfortunately, today they decided not to run the buses between 12:30-3:00 so we had no choice but to walk back into the center. It is my feeling that we should just stay away from all forms of transportation until this curse is lifted.

But when God closes down the tour bus somewhere he opens a photo-op (or something like that). We passed this little church where they were putting together these beautiful mosaics outside.

They are completely made of flower petals. Bellissima!

Scooters are everywhere and look like so much fun to tool around on. We most definitely will not be doing any tooling.

We stopped for a lunch al fresco (outside) at a little cafe. I, of course, had Lasgana Emiliana.

Mom had the twisty pastas (to be technical about it) with clams and zucchini blossoms.
Both were delicioso.

We saw the innards of three churches. They were all spectacular and made an impression, even on these two heathens.

Did I mention, though, how utterly evil Italy is? This picture should give you an idea what I mean.

We passed by the birthplace of the Zamboni. Jon, Robin, I just made that up.

Then we found our kind of church. The Gelatteria!

I don't know what samurais and mascarpone have to do with one another but I'm sure neither minds the association. I had limone and Mom had some kind of crazy hazelnut Nutella. concoction.

We praise the ice cream gods.

Fun on the Tarmac at the Phildelphia Airport. Or, We Said Venice, Not Verona!

Oh wow. There just had to be more to this saga didn't there.
So, where were we?
Oh yes, I finally did get to Philly. Here's proof:

(Robin: Go Flyers!)

And I connected with Mom. Yea!














This is where it gets scary. We board the plane, everything is going great. Then, that voice comes over the intercom. "Ladies and gentleman, I have some news..." And you know that news ain't good. "The plane's check engine light is on. " Bad. "We're gonna have maintenance come and take a look at it to be on the safe side." Very bad. We proceeded to sit on the tarmac for over four hours while they resolved the issue. They finally fed us around midnight and we took off around 12:30.

By the way, here’s my “vegetarian” meal since they ran out of the pasta option.














Mmmmm....
Luckily for us, I brought Mrs. London’s baguettes and almond croissants to ease the pain a little. Ahhh… Mrs. London’s….














Oh boy. As if the four hour wait on the tarmac wasn't entertaining enough. There was a catfight in the row right in front of us on the flight! Some older German woman insulted some younger American woman about her screaming kid and the younger woman said some strong words. Then they both stood up, faced off, more "words" were exchanged (I was impressed with the German womans grasp of the English language) until the American just hauled off and slapped her right in the face. Wow! I mean, wow, how often does one see something like that at 5 in the morning?? Almost as good as when the crazy lady got kicked off our Ireland flight for yelling that her baby didn’t get a special seat. Lesson: Don’t mess with women on airplanes with babies, I guess.

So of course we missed our original flight to Venice by, oh, about five hours. Here is the half hour long line we waited in at the Frankfurt Airport hoping to get on the last flight there. Once we realized that US Air had actually booked us on the flight to VERONA instead of Venice (hey, what’s the difference really?) we only had 20 minutes to get to our gate. Our gate must have been located some where in another postal code because we had to have run two miles through the airport to reach it. We made it with minutes to spare (and only mild cardiac arrest).














As much as we like to dislike them, those Germans sure run a good airline. Look as these lovely cookies we got with our tea…

And an hour later, look! I see lagoons. We are in Venice. Miracles do happen.


But not so fast. We took our chance with the roulette baggage claim and ended up one bag short. Ironic, no?

So we get to wait in yet another line.

By the grace of god our bag was actually there, in that sad little holding room of forlorn looking luggage. Seems the bag had managed to make all of it's connections just fine and was wondering what took us so long. Next, we took the bus to the Mestre train station, bought our tickets, split a panini and were off to Bologna on the train.

And just a mere 30 hours after leaving home, we are at our new home, Hotel Roma.
And look what is right next door to the hotel!

This is the pistachio. It’s a little blurry since I was making a lunge for it at the time this picture was taken.

I don't know if that hellish nightmare was worth one gelatto...
Yes, I think it was.

The Joy of Traveling

I just love air travel, don't you? Especially when everything goes so smoothly. It's such a relief to get to the airport with no traffic jams on the way. Then you can avail yourself of one of the many e-ticket kiosks to check in where a nice lady will tag your bag and whisk it away on the conveyor belt. You breeze through security and with shoes in hand make your way to your gate. And what a comforting sight to see at the end of it all:


Slightly less comforting is to turn around two seconds later and see this instead:



At least I didn't have to wait long to have my worst fears realized. The nice lady at the podium kindly announced that anyone traveling to Rome, Barcelona or Venice would definitely not make their connections. Thank you. Thank you so much.

So, it's back down to ticketing where I did manage to get on another flight leaving tonight. I'll be taking my original busted up flight to Philly after all. From there I'll fly to Frankfurt. From Frankfurt it's on to Venice where I'll arrive at 1:40 pm, only about four hours after my original arrival time.

Plus, the great guy who helped me was also able to transfer Mom's tickets to the same flights as me. Granted I did exaggerate slightly to the guy that she was "older" and "nervous" traveling even though my mother has traveled all around the globe and is quite capable of handling anything, but you know, desperate times... I wanted to make sure we got on the same flights. So all in all, I think this turned out rather well. We'll see how well in my next post. I'm already preparing titles:
"Sleepover at the Philadelphia International Airport"
or
"What to do in Frankfurt Germany for 10 hours (More wursts anyone?)
or
"Wait, we said Venice, not Venezuela!"
We shall see...