Florence and Bologna, Italy, Day 11

9am This morning we started later than usual.  We were due to check out and were heading for Bologna in the afternoon.  After breakfast we packed our things, checked out and headed for the Galleria dell'Accademia.  We arrived at about 11am and queued up to buy our tickets.  There was the usual graffiti on the wall.  Notice the perfect spelling.

The galleria is home to the David sculpture by Michelangelo.  Easily the largest naked David anyone will ever see in their lifetime.  Was it impressive?  For sure.  It's over 5m tall, is incredibly proportioned and was sculpted by a single person in 1504.  And to date that has never really been matched.  If it has let me know, I would love to see it.  Unfortunately photography is not allowed in the galleria so I couldn't take any pictures.  But as a consolation I took pictures of people waiting outside.

People queuing up to get in

12:30pm Left the galleria and headed off to Mercato Centrale and had lunch there.

Lunch, pasta and more pasta.  Only 5.50 Euro a plate

1:15pm Walked back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and then walked to the train station.  We had to catch the train to Rifredi station and catch the connecting train there to Bologna.  We arrived at Rifredi station 5 minutes later at 1:45pm when our connecting train was due at 1:40pm.  We thought it would arrive at 1:50pm but the tickets stated 1:40pm.  Opps, we should've checked.  So what happened?  You would think we would've been stuck and you are right, we were.  But as it turns out the connecting train was late by an hour and a half so even though we were 5 minutes late the connecting train was much later.  Again we were rescued by luck.  Okay next time we'll plan a lot better.  Really.

Stuck at a train station for more than an hour with homeless people and other strangers, not very exciting but a lesson in patience.  Some italian helped us to carry our luggage up the steps and Lauren gave him some sympathy change.  I bought a can of red bull to kill the time.

3pm The train arrives and we get our seats!  Woohoo!  Now only to wait an hour before we get to Bologna.

Some random scenery taken on the way to Bologna

4pm Arrive in Bologna.  We didn't have a map of the town so had to get one from the information counter.  Turns out our hotel wasn't located on the map.  The person who assisted us said it was "far away".  At this point I was thinking it was like several suburbs away.  We decided to catch a cab because we had no idea how far away it was.  Turns out it was only 10 mins drive away, about 2-3 kms which isn't far at all.  We're currently staying at the Savhotel which is the most modern place we've stayed at so far.  It's pretty swish.

Man who thinks he is a train gets on the tracks

4:30pm Started our walk to the central area of town.  Dropped by an Apple shop that sold iPad 2s but I found out that I could not claim the tax back unless I went to the airport and we're going off to Germany via train so that was a bummer.  Oh well!

The following are photos taken walking to the central area.  We also stopped by at Zara to look for men's clothes but they didn't really have a lot of things happening in the men's section.

Parco della Montagnola

Downtown along Via dell'Indipendenza

Piazza Maggiore

Fontana del Nettuno

Piazza Maggiore

7pm Dinner time.  We had a pretty big dinner.

Bruschetta

Mixed fish platter

Spicy octopus

Mixed salad

Fries

Veal with gorgonzola sauce and green apple

Pasta with meat sauce

Lemon sorbet

Didn't have ice cream that night because it was a pretty full dinner.  Very average though compared to what we've been eating before.  Sleep time was about 11pm or so.  Did about 15K steps total in walking.  This entry is for May 5th 2011.