We are in Italy

It’s Saturday morning and we are just outside Bologna.  Our luggage arrived with us on our 4 connections and every plane was on time.  A good start I would say.

View from the room window

The first hitch was when we looked for the thrifty car rental booth we found out they were no more.  But there were plenty of others and we got a cute little Nissan.  I understand why the cars are so small here…the roads are narrow and curvy so they fit better !!  it was crazy trying to find out way out of the city.  The streets are marked but not to match the directions we had.  Roger had fun before we left looking on line at the google maps where you drive it as if you are in a car and he had printed off some pictures of each changing point of our directions.  I thot he was nuts but it came in very handy a couple times.  One particular picture caught my eye because it had an English sign that said “sexy shop” with an arrow and said to take Roma road.  That was on one of the roads we needed but it took us 3 loops to realize the sign was on Roma rd.  But it became our landmark as we figured out where to go in that section of the directions and believe me we would not have done it with out it…well we would have but we might not have gotten to our B & B before dark.  There were a couple of other pictures that were very helpful along the way too and we arrived at the place we are staying at about 3. 

Can I just say that the area of Italy we have seen so far is gorgeous…the view from our window in our room is so pretty…mountains or large rolling hills I guess with villas dotting the tops to the hills, vineyards on the hillsides etc.  Hope we can get some good pictures before we leave this place.  It’s been a bit cloudy .  We went for a walk when we arrived, played games for awhile trying to stay awake , but ended up going to bed about 6.  We slept till 7:30 AM.  Still feeling droggy tho.  Jet lag.. ugh

We drove around a small town before coming here and found a small pizzaria to eat lunch in.  they did not have a restroom which was much needed so when we left we kept looking for one.  We decided to try a hotel but next to it was a restaurant. So we stopped in there and a lady speaking English said yes there was one and we could use it.  We chatted a bit and then were about the head out and the owner of the restaurant was aobut to seat us and we said no thanks we already ate.  Boy was she upset.  The lady told her she gave us permission but that did not help much  .  The restrooms were for customers only…we promised we would return the next day and eat there …she had a big enough scowl on her face when we left that we aren’t sure we want to go back.

Roger is busy looking at maps as  I write.  We hope to go out and explore soon..more to come later.

next day....we are in Ferrara and exploring as we go...we found a place where we are able to hook up to wifi for a few min so wanted to send this out.  There is a food festival of sorts taking place near a castle and we enjoyed taste testing sausage, cheese and olives etc.  the weather is drizzly but not to bad to keep us indoors .  too much to explore...talk again soon.