Bologna

As Judith and I walked to the train station at 7:30 this morning and it was already cold and raining, I told her that today was going to be an adventure. And was it ever. We successfully made it to Bologna without any problems and began our rainy day with the main piazza and the main church. The cool thing about Bologna is that it is a lot more touristy that Padova, so when you speak a full sentence of Italian, the Italians are impressed instead of quickly trying to speak English to you. We stopped into a museum with a really cool old library and an anatomical lecture hall. For lunch, I dined on some fantastic tortellini. I was quite proud of myself for taking charge of the map all day (clearly following in my mother's footsteps) though I will definitely be passing that duty on to someone else for the next trip. Then came one of the highlights of the day - climbing the Torre Asinelli. Although it was foggy, we still got a nice view of the city climbing up those 500 steps. The walls had these little holes in them at the bottom so water on a day like today would flow through and not get trapped on the top of the tower. All of a sudden, we heard a commotion. Turns out Judith dropped her Nalgene water bottle AND IT ROLLED RIGHT THROUGH THE HOLE AND FELL OFF THE TOWER. It the most horribly comical thing ever. We don't think anyone died...and we couldn't find a shattered water bottle anywhere so I don't know what happened. Afterwards, we walked through the University and a park with statues, so I of course mimicked them, my favorite thing to do. I had this FANTASTIC crepe with pistachio-flavored filling. It was so delicious. I bought a happy little scarf in this interesting market and then we returned to the train station. We arrived minutes before the train left so in the commotion, Judith, Marissa and I couldn't purchase our tickets in time before the train left, but we sent our other friends along because Amanda was sick. We decided to take the next train, went for a coffee, and returned and got on the train. We soon realized something was wrong. And that's when the day went downhill. Although we paid for a slow train, we accidentally got on the fast train and had to pay an extra 23 euro!! Ahhh the worst. It was so expensive. So that was a damper. Marissa and Judith discussed saving money on food, but as we all know, I cannot skimp on food in any way. So I will make up that money somehow. At the end of day, we finally returned sopping wet, but it was all definitely worth the adventure.