It’s been a while… my lame excuse comes in the shape of a short trip to Italy, courtesy of some cheap Easyjet and Ryanair flights.
Having only ever seen Venice on an all-too-brief day trip, we spent three days there, getting to know the parts of the city outside the obvious St Mark’s Square tourist hotspots. It’s well worth doing this; you avoid the teeming hordes of snapshooting coach parties, and there’s plenty of sites with equivalent beauty and intrigue (if not iconic status) away from the Campanile and Doges’ Palace. The sad thing, though, is that Venice is *such* a rip-off. Obviously, as one of the most popular (deservedly so) destinations in the world, and one constantly teetering on the brink of destruction, prices are going to be higher than elsewhere in Italy. But there seems to be so much cynical money grabbing, and frequently without a suitable level of quality service to match. Based on a random sample of restaurant menus around the city, I reckon your average low-budget backstreet trattoria in Venice is almost twice as expensive as the equivalent in Florence. Still, it’s a totally fascinating place to see, and one that just begs for repeat visits.
From Venice, we took a Eurostar class train on Italy’s splendid rail network to Bologna, where we spent the next couple of days. In terms of tourist sites and iconic views, Bologna, capital of the prosperous Emilia-Romagna region, is a long way below Venice, but it still has the timeless charm and grace typical of so many Italian cities. It might not have Tintoretto, Brunelleschi or Leonardo (although there’s a couple of very early Michelangelo sculptures in one of the churches) but that doesn’t matter. The whole city centre is a wonderfully preserved display of medieval architecture, with porticos lining almost every street.
Bologna’s main claim to fame is probably its reputation as something of a gourmet capital of Italy. We weren’t going to be testing any of the finer establishments, but this didn’t matter… even in the relatively cheap restaurants we dined at, the quality was fantastic – quite a contrast after the perfunctory tourist fare of so many Venice eateries.