| Glenn's Bologna Journal #4 4-08-02 to 4-9-02 O.K. Back to Bologna. Let me start off with "It was a wet and dreary day". We went into town with Andres and Sylvia. They were off to Florence today but wanted to spend a few hours looking around Bologna. We were dropped off near the main street of Indipendenza. Upon walking down the main street towards the main square (Piazza Maggiore), we entered the Cathedrale di S. Pietro. Again I continue to be awed by these amazing works of architecture and art from the 13th through the 18th centuries. A "highly recommend" in Bologna when you go. The next stop was off to Piazza Maggiore. It is in the heart of Bologna. We stopped by the Fountain of Neptune, San Petronius' Basilica, King Enzo's Palace, Podesta's Palace, and Banchi Palace, all connected to Piazza Maggiore. We then walked down to the "two towers". The "two towers" are from the 12th century, during the time of great wealth and prosperity. During this period every well-to-do family built a tower in their name as a family mark (over 180 towers were built during this time). The taller of the towers is the Torre degli Asinelli which stands 97.6m with only a 1.3m lean. It was built in 1109 and has 498 steps that visitors are more than welcome to climb. We opted against it. The second tower was built by the Garisenda family in competition with the Torre degli Asinelli. The Garisenda tower was less cautious with the foundation and was reduced to 48m, due to its 3.2m lean. From here, Andres and Sylvia took off for the train station and Florence. We would meet them there in a few days. From here we had some lunch and were off to the internet cafe to work on our website. We had received several e-mails from friends wondering where our pictures were, and probably wondered if we were even in Italy on vacation! Erin and I spent 4 hours each on computers working on the website. I worked on downloading journals from the PDA, and when I had accomplished that, Erin diligently copied them on to the web-site. I then proceeded to download our pictures from our digital cameras. I quickly realized that the file size of our pictures would have eaten up more than our 15MB website would allow. I was able to use a photo editor to reduce and re-orient the pictures, making them more usable on the website. Meanwhile, Erin learned a lot about page sizing, formatting, and linking pages together. She has done a wonderful job. We finally finished up around 7:00 p.m., which was just in time for the trattoria's and ristorante's to open. We found a decent restaurant in town, finished dinner around 9:15 p.m. (Remember this is Italy and we are learning to enjoy our meals like the Italians do). We then dashed off to grab the bus back to the hostel as the doors were locked by 11:30 p.m.. Once back at the hostel we met up with a few new travelers, including a nice young couple from Australia, and a young lady (Shayne) from Darwin (having lived near London for a while and planning to move back to Brisbane). We were relatively tired from the day and called it an early night (around 11:30 p.m.). Tuesday was another "wet and dreary day" in Bologna. We gathered ourselves up and went into town. Today Shayne joined us for the trip into town. Once into town, Shayne went sightseeing with a plan to meet us around 4:00 p.m. at the internet cafe so we could have dinner together. We casually toured through some of the streets of Bologna with a shopping agenda today. Erin was interested in buying some new black pants (which I will let Erin talk about in her journal). We then had lunch and sped off to the internet cafe to continue working on our website. Today we spent 3 hours each working on the site, but we added pictures and addressed some of the formatting errors we were seeing while viewing the site outside the web builder tools. We walked away today pretty excited about the outcome. Shayne met up with us around 3:30 p.m. and checked her own e-mails. We were not quite done at 4:00 p.m. (You know how it is: when you get into something and you're close to success, you don't want to put it down!!!) She left for a little while, then returned and patiently waited for us while we finished up. Since she is traveling by herself, she has a book to read to pass the time, which she did. Then off to dinner we went, and back to the bus stop to catch the bus in time to make curfew at 11:30 p.m.. |
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| Wine is not something Glenn enjoys, but he is making it a point to try some of Erin's each night, as Tuscany is world-famous for it's wine production |