A Better Place?

I really needed that break.  It was pretty much full on in terms of experiences and I'm glad I went and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  Five days in Italy are always going to be memorable I'd say given the places I've now been to there, it is a lovely place to visit and the people are friendly and the whole experience is quite laid back - well - apart from driving in some of the cities.

So the weekend started early on Thursday morning when I was picked up and we drove to Gatwick airport which took about 40 minutes, dropped the hire car off and then made our way via the little train to the North Terminal and booked in.  As my Nephew holds a Frequent Traveller card and can take one guest in, we checked in at First Class (no queues), went via private security to the executive lounge where we had coffee and breakfast.  You could have had a beer too but at 8 am that was stretching it a bit too far.  We flew to Bologna and were boarded first and had our baggage tagged priority (didn't make much difference at Bolgna).  It was as clear as you like and you could see miles from the plane.  It was perhaps the clearest I've ever seen it as there was no haze at all.  We flew over the Alps and in to Bologna airport.  It was a pretty interesting little airport and we then went to the Hire Desk - this is when it got really interesting.  It took us close to an hour to get the car!  There were lots of desks but everyone appeared to have booked with the same one that was dealing with ours.  When we got near it did say that privilege holders could go straight to the front of the queue.  I suppose we could have but we may have gotten lynched.  

Putting that behind us, we were upgraded to a VW Passat Estate car which was good.  It was quite new but as with all Hire Cars it was slightly battered around the periphery.  I think every panel was dented so it meant returning it would be OK as it already had seen some close Italian driving action :-)

We headed into Bologna and stopped off to grab something to eat.  We were late so many places had closed for the afternoon but we found a small cafe and grabbed a wrap and a coffee (you have to love their coffee).  We then headed out from there to Maranello, the home of Ferrari.  We looked at the factory and the test track (from the outside) and toured the shop and had a look at the outside of the museum.  We grabbed our first beer of the day and then headed back, via some other obscure factory, to the airport where we were to pick up our colleague who was on assignment photographing of all things the new Ferrari.  He does this for a living and flies around the world photographing the world's top cars in fabulous locations!

He called to say he was running late so we went into town and grabbed a Gelato and wandered around the river bank for half an hour.  We got back, picked him up and his amazing European Sat Nav (which we would have been lost without) which took us via a series of almost impossibly narrowing alleys into the very heart of Bologna.  Amazingly we managed to get parked and got ourselves ready to go out and hit the streets.  We made our way to Drogheria Della Rosa, recommended by a friend and there had the most amazing meal.  4 or 5 courses (I lost count) and beers, water, wine, Limoncello and a chat with the chef and more beers which was great of course.  We dreaded seeing what the bill might be but it was 150 Euros for the 3 of us.  That's pretty amazing I have to say.  We wandered back to the Hotel via a few night spots selling beer and got in around 2am.  

That's the first day out of the way then!  Well not quite as we spoke to the Night Porter and he gave us the heads up on parking and so for a small fee we were able to pick up a 24 hour tourists pass for a few Euro and that meant we would be able to park the car up until departure time on Saturday.

Day 2 was to be even more eventful than day 1 - see next blog post.....