Bologna, no Baloney

During our time in Italy, we got to see Venice and Florence as well as our home-base of Bologna.  Venice and Florence are famous, Bologna, except for the lunch meat, is not.  And that turned out to be good news.  Venice and Florence were over-flowing with tourists.  Bologna had a few, but it is not anything like the other two cities.

Brenda and I were both shocked at how much we enjoyed Bologna.  The first Friday we were there, quite by accident, we stumbled on this enormous flea-type market.  We were amazed by:

1)      Low prices.

2)      The fact that even LOCALS shopped here (not too many tourists in B-town).

3)      The magnitude of it.  I won’t guess how many vendors, but a lot!

4)      The orderliness of everything.

5)      The low sales pressure.

6)      The fact that at some appointed time, everyone packs up everything and leaves!

Here’s what it looked like during sales:

 Here’s what it looked like that evening:

Bologna has:

•  Museums,
• Great food,
• Beautiful people,
• Beautiful piazzas
• An amazing night life that seems to go really late
• Plenty of cathedrals
• Lots of motor scooters and bikes
• The Oldest Uni in Europe
• Several nice parks
• Some very nice clerks.

It’s got even more, but we’ll save that for later…