Lisa & Michelle's European Adventure

This is a companion post to our visit to Ravenna , so be sure to check that one out as well. This post is focused specifically on our lunch in Ravenna because everything about that experience deserves its own post... When you're in a completely new city in a country you don't really know, how do you decide where to eat? Lisa Shannon's answer is to write down some suggestions you find in the guide book, so we just marched ourselves toward suggestion #1 which, as we approached its dark doors, we weren't even sure was open. The windows and door were, however, covered with Michelin stickers for many, many years in a row, so apparently we were heading into a Michelin star restaurant without a reservation. Not only were they open, but they seated us! More specifically, they seated us below a Bob Dylan book and between Italian translations of Chimimanda Adichie's Americanah  and Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend , even though it took us the whole meal to figure out which W...

Ravenna is 46 miles east of Bologna, a little more than an hour on the train. We set an alarm on Sunday morning so we could catch a 9:00 a.m. train. It's about a 30-minute walk to the Bologna train station from our apartment. The streets were quiet and deserted when we set out, so different than the usual hustle and bustle of crowds during the days and evenings.  Our guide book describes our destination this way: "It's hard to believe that Ravenna was once the epicenter of the Western World for a brief spell, when it was the capital of the Western Roman Empire from A.D. 402 to A.D. 406. Those rulers and those fathers of the early Christian church, and then the Goths and Byzantines who followed them, blanketed Ravenna's churches and monuments in glittering mosaics..." Oh, and Dante is buried there. So after paying our respects to the poet and strolling through a "Dante versus Byron" prints exhibit (Byron used to visit Ravenna to visit his mistress and eve...

We've been in Bologna for six days and have begun to establish a local routine. Each morning after tea and breakfast we find a place to write and work. Monday we spent in the library of the University of Bologna, Tuesday a cafe with a food court at the University, Wednesday the public library of Bologna, and Thursday the cafe inside the public library of Bologna. We break for lunch, which is an impromptu stop: a platter of salamis and cheeses, a sandwich of speck and zucchini on pizza dough, Argentinian empanadas, a slice of pizza. We return home to do some more work, or read, or relax, and then spend the late afternoon exploring. We've been to several museums, a number of parks, and lots of churches. We also enjoy wandering around Bologna. There are so many narrow, curvy streets with porticos on the sides. You never know what you might discover.

We have been in Bologna for three days and are in love with this city. Our apartment is on an old, narrow cobblestone street filled with little shops and restaurants, about a 10 minute walk to the center of the city.  This is a view of our street, Strada Maggiore, toward one of the towers at the city center. This is the view out of our bedroom window into a small internal courtyard. Someone was playing with their dog in the courtyard when we took this photo. This is the door to our apartment building. As you can see, in Bologna they cut little doors into the regular doors because the regular doors are actually gargantuan doors. We're not sure what it might have taken in a completely different century to open this big door. On Saturday, we bought some local pears and plums at the market down the street. Today, we bought some parmigiana romana cheese from this shop. If you look closely you will see rounds of cheese on the shelves of this tiny store in the background. That's all t...

On day 2, we walked 18,000 steps in London!  We took the Tube to the National Gallery to see the Vincent Van Gogh exhibit, only to find when we got there that it was already sold out for the day. Undaunted, we looked at a special exhibit on David Hockney and regular holdings of various French and British painters. Michelle's favorite was Cézanne (the colors and the blocks of paint) and Lisa's was Turner and Constable (recalling her time spent studying in London and visiting these works). Then we crossed the Thames and walked along the south side to the Tate Modern museum to see an exhibit on the photographs of Zanele Muholi, which was NOT sold out and which WAS amazing. So glad to have learned about her and her work. Since St. Paul's Cathedral was just across the footbridge from there, we walked there and only went in because a woman who just walked out of the cathedral handed Lisa her two entrance tickets, making it free for us. After discussing the morality of charging pe...

We arrived in London around 11:00 a.m. Made it through customs without any problems. Grabbed our bags and took the Elizabeth Tube line to the Paddington station. The Paddington area is quite lively with lots of restaurants, pubs, and shops. A nice mix of tourists, locals, and English folks who catch trains from Paddington to places like Bath, Bristol, and the Cotswolds. Met some super-friendly English people as we were enjoying a pint at the pub after dinner. Also, met a guy who worked on a construction site nearby who was a Yankee fan ... could tell by his Yankee cap.  (DAD – We are now counting how many Yankees hats we spot... we are up to five so far.) After checking into our hotel and taking a short rest, we ventured out to explore Paddington.  We walked into an old church (St. James's Sussex Gardens) nearby to appreciate the beautiful height of the rafters and stained glass windows. Then took a nice long walk in Kensington Gardens. Such a beautiful outdoor space with natu...