My First Week in Bologna (and the first leg of my adventures!)

Well I made it to Italy! Yay! I haven't had much time this week to make a post, but presently I'm at Chiara's house by myself as she is at work and her family went out, so I thought it would be the perfect time to work on a blog post.

My flight left from Boston on Monday night. Of course I planned to sleep on the airplane and of course that didn't happen. I got maybe 2 hours of sleep but it was okay. We arrived in Madrid at around 9:30 AM their time, which felt to me like 3:30 AM. My layover there was about 7 hours and I landed in Bologna around 6 PM on Tuesday.

Chiara picked me up at the airport and we arrived at her house. We all know my Italian isn't the best so it's been a bit of a struggle to communicate... especially the first night. Chiara translated a lot for me, but since then I've become more accustomed to listening to her mom and her sister. We had dinner... her mom makes the most AMAZING food. I wish I could express how good it is in Italian but I don't even know if there are words. I need to learn how to make mushrooms like she does, as well as pasta. It's not common for us to eat tuna in pasta in the US but however she makes it, it's the most amazing thing. Her family is very welcoming and kind. They keep trying to feed me more and more until I burst!

Anyway, I slept for like 12 hours thanks to jet lag but on Wednesday Chiara's sister took me to Giardini Margherita, which is a nice park just south of the center of Bologna. The coolest part were the giant fish which would swim right up to the surface to eat bread crumbs that people threw into the stream with no fear. Also there were more turtles than I could count. My photos aren't the greatest but here's a couple of the fish:

They were probably 1.5 - 2 ft long. After walking around we headed back for lunch. Google Translate, although bad for homework, is definitely helpful when eating lunch with people that you can't communicate with very well! I'd try to say what I wanted to in Italian, then we kinda confirmed we all understood each other with Google Translate. The food was fantastic though, I wish I could email smells to everyone. We had risotto and mushrooms and pasta and all sorts of wonderful things.

In the afternoon Laura showed me the center of Bologna. I generally understood what she was telling me and she was very patient with my lack of understanding but now I can find my way around the center fairly well and I have no problem taking the bus. After a couple of hours we headed back for dinner.

Yesterday (Thursday) I met up with some Wellesley friends in Bologna! It was great to see Paulina, Kathryn, and Emily again, and I met two new Wellesley people as well! We got lunch at a place Laura recommended, Altero (http://www.pizzaltero.it/), and walked around for a bit and got acquainted/caught up. It was really great to see some familiar places and get a chance to walk around a bit. I got gelato (yay!) then a stomach ache from eating too much (boo!) so I went back to Chiara's to take a nap. 

The food here tends to make you want to sleep after eating it. Usually during the day when I'm not in the center or with Chiara, I try to get caught up on work for things back home (HCI stuff, internships, planning for next week and London), so I've also been doing that. 

When Chiara was on her way back from work, I hopped on the bus and met her so we could go climb up to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca. So naively, when her family started laughing hysterically at the thought of this doing this, I just thought I misunderstood. Nope. They were laughing because it's a little more than 2 miles up a combination of very steep ramps and stairs. I was hot and tired by the time I reached the top but we did it! According to Chiara it's something that the Bolognese do frequently and something one must do when coming to Bologna. The church was very pretty and the view of Bologna from the top was great. My photos didn't really do it justice, especially during dusk so I'll leave the photo taking to the professionals on this one and share some of those: 

Source: http://journeytom.com/the-walk-to-madonna-di-san-luca/#

And here's one that I took: 

Today I've just been hanging around the house, getting everything booked for when I go to Florence next week. Tonight I'm meeting up with Paulina and Kathryn again for dinner! This weekend Chiara and I are going on some great adventures so you'll have to wait until Sunday night or later to see what we'll be up to! =P 

In the mean time, here are some random photos of Bologna I took!

Me in front of Neptune's Fountain, as requested... I think I'll try to take a better photo later.

The two towers, Asinelli and Garisenda. These are the iconic towers of Bologna. I may try to climb the stairs in Asinelli, but there are 500 stairs and I'm not sure how I feel about doing that in the heat, haha.

You can still see the old wood on this building.