Dave & Meredith’s Travel Blog

I’ve just posted three more galleries of photographs from our trip to Italy. It feels good to finally be caught up since we left Venice one week ago. So without further ado, the gallery from the Cinque Terre is here, the gallery from Lake Como, Ravenna, and Bologna is here, and the gallery from Venice is here. And of course, the Photo Galleries page has been updated with the same links. Any feedback is welcome. Enjoy!

- Dave

Bologna isn’t on the tourist agenda for most Americans.  Though our stay here was brief (a day and a half), we saw enough of the city to know that it *should* be on the agenda.  It’s a beautiful city that feels so vital and young, even though many of the buildings are over 500 years old.  I guess one of the things I like about it is it’s very real - the people we see in restaurants, cafes, and on the streets are mostly locals - not tourists.  I know I just said that tourists should come here, but of course, I like it *because* there aren’t many tourists.  This line of thinking makes my head hurt a little.  Anyway, the atmosphere reminds me a little of Boston - I guess to a certain extent, student towns have something in common even when in different countries.  I’d like to come back to Bologna - we’ve really enjoyed the short time we’ve had here.  Also, not that we’ve been suffering everywhere else in Italy, but they say Bologna is the gastronomic capital of the country.  We certainly have eaten some very good food here. 

While we were here, we met one of my PTC colleagues from the office in Bologna.  Maria is a wonderful person.  She brought her two boys into the city after work and we met her husband at his office, and then we went out for drinks and appetizers.  They showed us some of the city after dark, and we finished the night with some gelato.  Super fun.

Here are some pics from the city:

Bologna is filled with arcades.  It didn’t rain while we were there, but if it had, we would have stayed nice and dry.

Bologna’s leaning towers: they’re not as famous as Pisa’s (even though one of them leans more), but instead of tacky souvenir shops surrounding them (like in Pisa), there are great restaurants and gelato places.

Statue in front of one of the towers.

The Neptune fountain in Bologna caused quite a stir when it was unveiled.  It’s still pretty racy today with Neptune in all his glory and water spouting from the mermaids’ breasts.

Our hotel bordered on this street - pretty cool.

Mmm…prosciutto and cheese.

A businessman buys some fruit and veggies on his lunch break.

This fish monger was across the street from our hotel.

- Meredith

Oops, this is really #10. We forgot to take a picture from the sisters’ apartment in the Veneto.

Here is the view from our Bologna hotel room:

- Meredith

I’ll keep it short.

It turns out that one of the most famous/best orthopedic institutes in the world is in Bologna (Rizzoli Institute).  We learned that the best thing to do would be to go to the emergency room there, take a number, and wait for a doctor to see me - we were told to expect a long wait.  I think we waited about 5 minutes before they called me, and we were in and out of the hospital in about an hour - so much different than the last experience.

The doctor told me that my ankle was dislocated but I probably didn’t tear my ligament (that mystery is solved!).  When he took the cast off and tested my ankle, it hurt a lot less than it had before, so that’s encouraging, but it was all shades of black and purple! They didn’t let Dave in the room with me or else I’d surely have a picture to show you.  Unfortunately, the doctor wants me to stay off of my ankle for at least another 8 days, so after he looked at it, he put the cast back on with new gauze, and told me to see another orthopedic doctor in about a week.  I’ll be in Merano then in the Dolomites - he said there is a great orthopedic center there too.  I still have to keep injecting the anti-coagulant as well.  On the upside, I do have new, clean cotton and gauze on my cast, so, that’s obviously a plus.

I had prepared myself to be told that I needed a cast for the next month, so I wasn’t too disappointed with the news.  But when I told Dave what the doctor said, he looked crestfallen.  I think he had really hoped that I would get a walking cast and be a bit more mobile.  He’s done the lion’s share of lifting, carrying, wheeling, helping, looking to see what’s around the next corner to see if it’s worth me hobbling over there, and generally seeing less than he would have seen if he was on his own, or if I was more mobile, etc. since the incident, so it would have been great for both of us if the cast had come off.  Maybe next week - stay tuned.

- Meredith

I nearly minored in Art History in college (I found out too late that I needed 10 classes for a minor; I had taken 9.  Oops).  Anyway, my favorite classes were medieval and Byzantine art and architecture.

There’s a town in Emilia-Romagna near the Adriatic named Ravenna that was the seat of the Western Roman empire for a short time after Rome fell (5th century), and then was the home of Byzantine emperors from the 6th - 8th centuries.  There are incredibly preserved Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna that I learned about in school, and I’ve wanted to come see them for myself for many years (we visited the big four sights - San Vitale, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo and Sant’ Apollinare in Classe).  I’m not sure Dave got a lot out of the visit, but he humored me, and probably got a kick out of me crutching myself around town just to look at some 1400-year-old mosaics.  He took some great pictures for me:

Detail of the ceiling of San Vitale. 

The varied ceilings of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia.

Detail showing the Three Magi from Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo.

Detail from the ceiling of Sant’ Apollinare in Classe.

- Meredith