In September of 2011 we boarded a plane for Europe. We flew the Polish airline LOT, which was a big mistake (I’ll get more into that later). Departed from Chicago, landed in Warsaw, and ended up in Katowice. My FIL’s smiling face is always such a welcome sight after that journey, especially with a toddler in tow (I have pages of notes about flying with a toddler, which I’ll write a separate post on). After a few days in Poland, where I spent most of my time sleeping off the jet lag, we headed back to the Katowice airport and hopped a plane to Bologna. Our Italian vacation, the one I had been dreaming of for years (this is why I took Italian in college after all!) had finally arrived.

I spent a lot of time researching before this trip. Hours and hours reading blogs, checking out books, trying to figure out where we wanted to stay and where we wanted to eat (what we would actually do while we were there wasn’t something I felt needed much attention, it’s Italy after all!). I’m going to be writing several posts for each location we visited, one to show you what we did, one to review where we stayed, and one talking about where we ate. I kept detailed notes during our trip for this very purpose, because there were places that we LOVED which must be visited. And there were places we wasted time and money on which should be avoided. If you’ve been to Italy and have suggestions for other people on what they should do and eat, and where they should stay, I’d love to have you chime in down below.

I’ll go ahead and show you everything we did, but if you’re considering a visit to Bologna, read my summary at the bottom. (Teaser: I don’t think this is an area worth visiting if you’re considering other options.)

Our first stop on our trip was Bologna. How nice to fly into Italy not looking like a hot mess, right? Having that 2-day stopover in Poland before we came to Italy was so wonderful, because we were able to step off the plane and start enjoying our trip right away, instead of forcing ourselves to fight through the jet lag. We flew into the Forli airport on Friday, grabbed a taxi (which was very easy) to the train station, and then spent something like an hour trying to figure out how to get up to Bologna on the train. The station was very small and the train schedules were really confusing. The first train we missed because it sound it would be on platform 4, but was really on platform 2. Eventually we asked a fellow passenger for help and made it up to Bologna.

We didn’t get to our hotel until pretty late, but of course having dinner wasn’t a problem, since Italians don’t eat dinner until between 8-10pm at night. The next morning, Saturday, we set out and started exploring. I had planned out an itinerary involving a bakery, pizza, a snack, ice cream, Zara, a toy store, a hike, and dinner. Ha! We slept in and went shopping for That Husband instead.

Celio is a gem of a store if you have a slim husband who has trouble finding clothes that fit in American stores that cater to the heavier American male population.

Probably my favorite statue in all of Italy.



Whenever I visit Europe, I eat as much gelato as possible. There are very few places in America that do it as well as the cheapest places in Europe.

On Saturday afternoon we hiked up to the Madonna of San Luca, which we both agree was the best part of our time in Bologna. It’s a long, sweaty hike, but the entire journey is covered by these beautiful porticoes. We hiked, took in the views, and ate dinner right afterward, which felt perfect.

One thing we would do differently: bring water for this hike. I had discovered these public drinking fountains in Rome, so I jumped right in and cooled myself down after our hike, but TH was wary.  You’ll see the water flowing straight down, but use your finger to stop the end and it will come out a hole at the top, ready for you to drink. It tastes good too.


Sunday morning I convinced TH that we should walk to church. On the way we passed the Bologna marathon. The African runners went by, and a few minutes later the first Italian guy ran past. That’s when the loudest cheers were heard. :)

Walking to church was an awful idea. It took us over an hour, we were late, and both of us had blisters so bad that we grabbed a cab on the way back. We also chose to go during ward conference, which meant the room was so full some people were standing. We decided to only stay through the sacrament.

That evening we walked over to the Sette Chiese, Seven Churches. It was fine, but neither of us are really that interested in architecture and that’s why you would visit this area.

On our walk back we walked past a big free concert held in the middle of the square, Centro Storico.

We flew into Bologna on Friday evening and took a train to Florence on Monday morning. We came to Bologna specifically for the food, and as I’ll cover in my What We Ate post, we weren’t very impressed. Several of our meals were incredibly disappointing (even after hours of research online before we left, trying to figure out where to eat) and the city as a whole felt very run-down. Most of the walls along the porticoes were covered in graffiti, and even some of the ancient monuments! Unemployment among the younger generation in Italy is very high, and I think graffiti and minor vandalism is a way that people are expressing their anger over the government’s failure to address this (maybe things will be looking up soon?). Now that our trip is over, I really regret our time there. If I could do it over, we never would have gone to Bologna, and would have devoted the extra time to the Cinque Terre area instead (which we’ll get to a few posts from now!).

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