Bologna: Home of Jeff's Fraternity

After Venice, we stopped in Bologna, Italy for a few hours. This was on Jeff's "must see" list as his fraternity, Kappa Sigma was founded at the local university in 1400.  We didn't have much on our agenda as we knew we were not spending too much time there.

We walked towards the city centre, and stopped in a building that people were going in.  Because it was so close to the road, we couldn't tell that it was actually a church.  This church was definitely one of our favorites, as you can see why in the picture below.

After the church, Jeff and I found the famous two towers.  Apparently, there used to be many of these towers (many are still around), but these two are by far the largest.  So like any other tower we come in contact to...we climb it.  I can say that this was the scariest climb we have had in our 9 months abroad.  The stairs were made out of wood, and honestly felt as if they were going to come loose off of the building.  Thankfully they did not. The tower had no airflow whatsoever, so we were sweating by the time we got to the top.  The top, like all the other towers, had a great view of the city.  It also gave us a better understanding of where some other "hot spots" were that we could visit next.

 The Towers

 Up we go!

 Wouldn't you be freaked out?

 We (I) may look happy, but I was already panicking about the route down. 

We realized Bologna is a much bigger city than we thought!

We decided to grab some street food...pizza and sandwiches. What else?  We ate in another plaza area, which had the Basilica of San Petronio.  In my book, it had one of the ugliest exteriors of all of the churches we had seen so far.  Once we entered, as you probably expected, was beautiful inside.  We were unable to take pictures, so you are just going to have to take my word for it...or look it up yourself! We did learn that the reason the outside was so "ugly" was because they could not decide on what the outside would look like.  They started building over the brown brick, and would stop.  I'm not sure if it will ever be finished., but can you imagine how impressive it would be if all that marble went to the top!?

You can see how it is uneven and unfinished

We walked around the city, looked around in some shops, local markets, grabbed a few items from the supermarket, and went back to the plaza where we drank our boxed wine.  Big spenders, right?  It reminded me of my time abroad, and I was excited to share that experience with Jeff.  Not the best wine, but we still had fun! We headed back to the train station where we went to our next destination.

 Street filled with local markets, restaurants, and shopping

Boxed wine!

Onto the next adventure...