Even though we only had three days left in Italy and still had lots of plans, we decided to take it easy. We stayed in bed to give our bodies a better chance of recovering, hopefully do something on Sunday and Monday, and perhaps not still be quite so sick when it was time to fly.
We literally stayed in bed until about 15:00, when we decided we had rested enough and might as well check out Bologna.
We were staying close to the centre, so we walked outside and were immediately under the porticoes. They looked cool and made the city feel different, although we could not immediately put our fingers on why.
We later read that Bologna has almost 62 km of porticoes, with about 40 km in the historic centre. They started appearing around the 12th century when buildings were extended outwards from their upper floors to create more room, partly because the university was bringing more people into the city. In 1288 the city made porticoes compulsory on new houses, turning privately owned space into covered public walkways. Twelve representative sections were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021.
Our first stop was Mò Mortadella Lab for a sandwich with a very generous helping of mortadella, cheese and pistachio.
We then walked through Bologna’s central “T” streets, which are pedestrian-only on weekends, towards Piazza Maggiore. Even after 70 days of old European cities, we were still amazed by all the old buildings and history.
We went into a few more churches and looked at Bologna’s Two Towers, Asinelli and the visibly leaning Garisenda.
Close by, we bought three scoops of gelato. This turned out to be the last gelato of the trip. We will definitely miss our daily—or at least every second or third day—gelato.
After that we reckoned we had seen enough and headed back, stopping at Mò Mortadella Lab for a second sandwich to take away. This time we chose one with burrata and sun-dried tomatoes.
The cheese was not what we expected. We wanted stracciatella, but burrata has a mozzarella shell filled with stracciatella and cream. When we cut the sandwich open, the cream poured out.
The mortadella pulled it through nevertheless.
We ate it back in the room. We wished we could take home one of those giant mortadella rolls. Some commercial Mortadella Bologna rolls genuinely come in 25 kg sizes, so that guess was not made up after all.
Leave A Comment