Italy land of amazing food!

Our amazing time in Austria was coming to a close. The positive twist is that from here our trip becomes interconnected with food! After our cable car adventures in the Austrian alps and a nice big sleep, it was time to continue our journey into Italy. We woke up at about 6:30 am for our 8:49 am train from Innsbruck to Bolzano Bozen, we arrived there at 11:00 am but this was not our final destination.

Bolzano Bozen was our lunch stop, a small Italian town nestled in the alps, as it was bucketing down with rain, we stopped inside a cute Italian café to have something to eat. Once there was a break in the rain, we headed outside and explored the city a bit before our next train. We got to see the outside of the town’s church with amazing and intricate tiled work on the roof, I have never seen tile work quite like that before.

A funny thing happened at one of the cafés we stopped at. My mum and brother ordered a mocha, this was a cultural no-no in Italy. It took a little while before they understood the gravity of their mistake. They eventually interpreted the misstep based on offended facial expression of the wait staff saying, “a Mocha whatever that means”. Needless to say, after having offended the Italians and their coffee culture on our first day, we did not ask for another mocha while in Italy.

Our train form Bolzano Bozen left at 3:12 pm and arrived in Bologna at 5:35 pm. Once we got out of the train, we walked to our accommodation and settled in at around dinner time. Hungry again, we went out and found ourselves in this cute little restaurant where the owner was extremely nice and genuinely happy to have us. We filled our bellies up with amazing food and to top it all off, we had a tiramisu for dessert. David, my stepdad didn’t really like tiramisu until he tasted the real deal in Italy. Now he was converted. In Australia and many other places in the world, they don’t take their food as serious as people in Bologna do. They don’t use, traditional recipes and the best ingredients and simply don’t use the same traditions which results in things like Tiramisu not being made as well as in Italy. All I can say from my own humble experience, is that the food in Italy was all mouth wateringly delicious.

After our dinner we went home and instantly fell asleep. The next day we woke up a lot later then we usually do. We woke up at about 9 am and headed out for some breakfast, we ended up finding a really nice focaccia place.  Later in the day we had something really exciting planned for this day -we had a cooking class booked. This was one of the most expensive activities we did on this whole world trip, but it was very worth it. Because we had a great experience and came out with a new skill at the end of it.

When we got to the cooking class, the funny thing was that we got taught by a Filipino chef in Italy about Italian food. He was however trained by Italian Nona’s for years and was really good, he really knew what he was talking about. We learned how to cook Tagliatelle, Ravioli and Tiramisu. Then we got to eat what we cooked “Yummy”! After spending a few hours in the cooking class and eating we spent the rest of the day exploring the city of Bolonga. At the end of the cooking class, while we were eating our delicious food, we also had an opportunity to try limoncello, a traditional drink from Southern Italy that has a vibrant, sweet, and tangy flavour made from Italian lemon liqueur.

We saw the Basilica of San Petronio in the Piazza Maggiore. The outside looks quite strange due to it being built into different styles across a large period of time. We did not go inside of the Basilica as we were just wandering the streets. When we saw it was odd looking, we did some online research on the spot. I am honestly not a very big fan of the two different style looks; I think it looks a little half-finished and not as clean. Bolonga is also home to the world’s oldest operating university, it was founded around 1088, and it was so cool to see it.

It was late September when we were in Italy and I spend some time reflecting, lots of my friends where graduating while I was gallivanting around Italy, but I felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be.

As our time in Bologna came to an end, we checked out of our apartment early and walked to a bag drop facility. Once getting rid of our bags for a bit we then walked to get some breakfast which happened to be focaccia again it’s just so good you can’t go wrong with it. We ended up at this really nice Italian café eating focaccia and drinking coffee as the morning sun streamed into the café and a stream of Italians where lining up outside of the café (that’s how you know it’s good). At this café they also had sourdough loafs as big as a bike wheel. My question was how on earth are you going to carry that back to your house? Do they have to feed 12 kids? It’s going to be a whole workout lifting that thing.

Below are some cool photos of Bologna that I took.

Anyway it was time for me to get on the next train to Roma, that is a whole other adventure.