La Grassa-AKA-Bologna

I ate the fat of Italy, and it was good. I went to Bologna and Parma for one thing: Food. I heard that some of the best Italian cuisine comes from this region, and I was not disappointed.


My journey started on a Saturday night when I arrived in Bologna. It was quite chilly compared to Catania. I took the train to Parma immediately and found my hotel which also had a restaurant. I peeped my head in to get a table and it smelled incredible, and I couldn’t wait to dive in.

I got up early the next day and got some coffee at a nearby caffe. I loved walking around the city so early on a Sunday morning, the air was crisp and refreshing and there were no busy intersections filled with noise to irritate me.



I went to a museum which should have cost me about 6 euros, but chatting with the man at the ticket counter for a few minutes led me to a free ticket. I had the place to myself pretty much. There was an awesome wooden theatre and a great gallery filled with religious artwork. I saw my first real Da Vinci. From there I strolled through the gardens of the Palazzo Ducale where there were people taking their morning runs. There were also many people on bicycle as well. In fact I noticed that the city was filled with bicyclists instead of cars and scooters.





When I decided it was late enough to eat non breakfast food, I stopped in at a nice little wine and cheese shop. There I had the most delectable Parmesan cheese and Prociutto crudo I have ever tasted. The cheese was aged 24 months and the meat 26 months. Along with it I drank the regional wine called Malvasia. Excellent. For lunch that afternoon I had a type of pasta called Tortelli, which looked more like ravioli than tortellini. It was filled with ricotta and spinach, covered in oil, butter, and of course, parmesan.








Parma was a small town and I covered almost all the sights in just one day. I spent most of the day just enjoying the atmosphere and slow pace. Outside the city center were these long streets with beautiful old homes that reminded me of Aunt Robin’s neighborhood.


I headed back to Bologna that afternoon and entered into the craziness of a big city once again. Bologna felt very claustrophobic because the streets are lined with colonnades instead of being open sidewalks. The only relief to this are the many extremely large open piazzas. One of the main piazzas, Piazza Nettuno, was beautiful and huge, and had the coolest fountain of King Neptune. The basilica in this piazza was almost meant to be made larger than that of San Pietro in Rome, but the pope put a stop to that right quick. Still, it was pretty gigantic inside. Since I went early in the morning, there was no one there. Bologna also has these two towers called the Torre di asinelli. I climbed to the top and got what would probably be a great view of the city were it not for the fog.

All in all I enjoyed my trip to Bologna/Parma. It was a great change of pace. The people in that region I found to be extremely friendly and courteous. Of the two I liked Parma better and next time I go there I want to go out to the farms where they make the cheese and take a tour. I couldn’t this time because I was there on the weekend when they don’t have tours.

My flight back to Catania went sour when I found out that the Catania airport was closed due to the ash from Etna. So I actually flew into Palermo and took a bus for 3 hours to Catania. Instead of getting home at 8 I got home at 11. I guess the good news is that there is another airport on Sicily to fly in and out of, at least I didn’t have to fly into somewhere really far from Catania.