Week 10: Just don't call it Bologna
It's Mortadella!
Bologna is known as the Foodie capital of the world. Though the name in the US is associated with cheap kids lunch meat, Bologna is actually the home of mortadella (like bologna except really really good) and Bolognase sauce in pasta and lasagna.
Bologna has some nice squares and churches and an old college with beautiful buildings. Most notably, it has lots and lots of covered walkways with arches. Lots of arches. For instance, there’s a covered walkway made from stone arches that goes for 4 km from the city up a hill to a church overlooking the city.
We loved visiting the little food places, bakeries, meat counters, pasta places, pizza places, and trying all the food. We did a lot of little picnics.
We only really ate at a restaurant twice. And it happened to be the same restaurant, a pasta place, Sfoglia Rina which was THAT good. All the pasta is freshly hand made, and everything was great. Even the other diners were friendly. One local actually recommended a gelateria: Cremeria Cavour.
Which was closed, but we went the next night, and Mama Bear was in LOVE. She can’t eat milk, and this place had sorbets, not just of strawberry but also a really good pistachio and hazelnut sorbet. And all this in a CHOCOLATE cone. And did you know that Strawberry, Hazelnut, and Pistachio can form the Italian flag?
We also climbed up one of the two towers, which Baby Bear dubbed the “Leaning Tower of Square Pizza”. It was VERY tall (500 steps), very skinny, very square, and very much leaning. The beautiful views were worth the climb.
Our final meal was a Bologna style buffet lunch (where the main point is usually to get drinks with a buffet on the side). It was a super deal, with 10 Euros for a buffet which included water (normally 2 euros alone), sushi, and dessert (as well as rice, couscous, many pastas, pizza, chicken wings, etc). And though this is not “elevated dining”, apparently when you’re in a foodie city, even mediocre food is fantastic!
