That's no baloney, that's Bologna!

A train ride through the Swiss alps and into the Italian countryside is very pretty, as you may imagine.  The boy caught up on sleep, while the hubs and I fantasized about living along the tracks in one small village or another whenever we get tired of traveling from place to place.  We arrived safe in Bologna and took a 20 minute cab to our newest Airbnb.  We planned this stay for three nights.

Little did we know, Bologna is a "foodie" city!  We had a kitchen, so we had planned to cook, but the small pizzaria around the corner fed us for almost the same as buying all of the market staples to have cooked at home.  We had pasta, pizza, calzones and salads for breakfast, lunch and dinner most days.  Mmmm.  The pizzaria had a man from Kashmir cooking the pies and a man from Egypt delivering them.  The owner is Italian and we met him later in our stay.  They were very appreciative of our appreciation and gave me discounts or free drinks most of the time we were there.  

As in almost all Italian towns, a church anchors a Piazza.  You go and you sit and you people watch and you bring your children and the elderly out to visit with the village.  Bologna was no different and has a beautiful church.  On the inside.  On the outside, it looks partially finished.  San Petronio Basilica.  "It is the tenth-largest church in the world by volume, 132 metres long and 66 metres wide, while the vault reaches 45 metres inside and 51 metres in the facade. With its volume of 258,000 m³, it is the largest (Gothic or otherwise) church built of bricks of the world"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Petronio_Basilica

We sat in the piazza and watched the people.  It was awesome.  To sit and do nothing is awesome.  We so seldom do that in the US.  

Our Airbnb was great, upstairs beds, downstairs bath and some sketchy internet being the only downfalls.  We survived and thrived and the boyo got to participate in yet another Magic the Gathering Gran Prix.  I'm grateful because Bologna was a great city and I don't know if I would have seen it without his reason for attending.  Thankfully it had a washer, but as so many European apartments, no dryer.  And it was very, very humid.  It rained 60% of the time.  So I got creative.  I turned the heat up and used the radiators to dry the clothing:)  It was cool enough to do that, although normally we like it cool.  Worked like a charm!

Once we checked the weather for the annual Venice flooding of St. Mark's, we made our travel plans. We left for Venice after three days.  But I would be remiss if I didn't mention the French election results.  Macron won!  Yay!  The EU continues!