Nearly Neutral Travel

Bologna is an interesting city: known for its food, for being home to the oldest university in the world, but also for being a big, noisy and gritty place. So, I was surprised to find just how beautiful it was, pairing endless porticoes that provide shelter from the fierce sun with gorgeous churches, edgy graffiti and a large, rowdy student population enjoying reasonably-priced food and drink in unpretentious bars and tabacchi. I shouldn’t have been surprised – Italy does this casual beauty SO well.

Bologna goes by many nicknames, so we tried to see a bit of each side of the city in our time there. The first one was easy…

🍝 La Grassa (the fat one)

Our much-anticipated pilgrimage to Bologna began with – what else? – a big plate of Tagliatelle al Ragù. We’d built up quite the appetite after spending the day at the Ferrari museums in Modena and Maranello, so we headed straight out to try Bologna’s most famous food export at Sfoglia Rina. Although the meaty sauce is known as bolognese elsewhere in the world, in its hometown it’s better known as ragù, and rather than the spaghetti to which we’re more accustomed in the UK, here it is customarily served with tagliatelle – the sauce clings to the wider, more textured pasta much better. It was rich, savoury and made for a super-satisfying meal, although if I’m honest I was a bit surprised that it didn’t taste more different to what I make at home – I’ll take that as a sign that I’m doing something right!

The next morning, we began our day with more food, visiting the Mercato delle Erbe. This was a great place to start – we needed to stock up on anti-scurvy measures (fruit) anyway, so browsing the other gorgeous produce and viewing an outstanding dog parade was just the cherry on top. It’s always nice to be shopping where the locals shop – and another thing I couldn’t get over was just how peaceful this area was, even though the central streets (mere steps away) were absolutely packed.

We headed back towards the centre for lunch, stopping to join the enormous queue outside Mò Mortadella Lab. The line moved incredibly fast – there were just three chaps making the sandwiches but they obviously had a good system and they were having a laugh while they were at it. Oli went for the mortadella, stracciatella, sundried tomato and basil version, while I went for mortadella, grilled aubergine, truffled stracciatella and rocket. We’d just passed the perfect spot to eat our spoils (a step under one of the porticoes), so we made a beeline for it and savoured our sandwiches while admiring the impeccable street scene and the lengthy photoshoot unfolding in the next arch along. Excellent free entertainment! I’d give the sandwiches a solid 8/10 – great flavour combos but they really hadn’t skimped on the stracciatella, which did make them a tad messy to eat.

The final item on our must-eat list was tortellini in brodo, which literally translates as tortellini in broth. I had no idea that this was a traditional way to serve tortellini – unlike with the ragù, I’ve clearly been doing many things wrong in my preparation of these little filled pasta parcels! I also had no idea that there was a difference between tortellini (which are more delicate and typically filled with a meat, egg, parmesan and nutmeg mixture) and tortelloni (larger and typically filled with vegetarian goodies like ricotta and spinach) – I genuinely thought it was two different ways of spelling the same thing. Anyway, I digress – the dish was super-simple but Oli gave it a good review because the broth meant that each mouthful had a salty, meaty preview even before he’d bitten into each tortellino.

🎓 La Dotta (the learned one)

To explore another side of the city, we headed to the Observatory Museum, which sat within Palazzo Poggi at the University of Bologna. This tower was built in 1726 specifically to suit the requirements of the astronomers who would use it, and as we made our way up to the top, we saw reconstructions of experiments that were conducted there as well as some beautiful astronomical and navigational instruments from the 13th to 18th century. Probably my favourite item was a delicate Chinese rice paper map of the constellations from 1634. I’d never really considered before that it’s possible to join up the stars anyway you please, so it’s unsurprising that these were totally different than the constellations we would recognise. It’s always nice to see a different perspective on something! And despite the tours that had departed earlier in the day being fully booked, we somehow ended up with an essentially private tour of the tower, which was rather nice.

At the top of the tower, we emerged onto a sun-baked terrace that gave us a gorgeous view over the red rooftops of the old city, which leads nicely onto Bologna’s third nickname…

🧱 La Rossa (The red one)

Actually, this nickname apparently refers not just to Bologna’s beautifully rosy appearance, but also to the staunchly left-leaning politics in the city. I’ll stay well out of Italian politics in this post, but we did enjoy the architecture!

We also loved the UNESCO World Heritage porticoes that stretched for over 60 km (!) around the city. They provided much-needed shade and every one was different. We even stayed in an apartment tucked up in the eaves of one of the porticoes, which gave us a hidden vantage point over the streets below. This was a great spot to eat breakfast while we people-watched, hoping that no one glanced up and saw us in our pyjamas.

Finally, Bologna’s symbols are the two neighbouring medieval towers, Torre degli Asinelli and Torre Garisenda. The former is the tallest leaning medieval tower in the world, but the latter is even more wonky, leaning 3.2m over its 47m height! Given my wobbly knees performance in Pisa, we decided to save our pennies and didn’t climb the Torre degli Asinelli, which is open to the public.

After a couple of days exploring the beautiful contradictions of Bologna, which far exceeded my already-high expectations, we hopped on another train towards the small town of Brisighella to explore another side of the Emilia-Romagna region.

Since 1943, the small town of Maranello in northern Italy has been home to Scuderia Ferrari (the racing division of Ferrari, including the Formula 1 team) and Ferrari’s road car factory. I’d planned an ambitious travel day from Parma to Bologna, featuring stops at not one, but two Ferrari museums in Maranello and Modena. With a tight schedule, we didn’t have much contingency time if anything went wrong…

So of course, things started to unravel almost immediately when we got off the train at Modena’s canary-yellow station. We’d planned to store our luggage at an arts centre just next door, but its shutters were half down when we arrived, and when Sara broke in, the only person she could find was a very confused maintenance chap. Sara accosted him anyway and for a moment he looked like he might just help us out, but something told us that this might not be the best idea.

By some miracle, the tourist information booth outside the station was actually open and the friendly chap inside pointed us towards a hostel roughly 10 minutes away by foot which also offered baggage storage. We just about managed to power walk there and back in time for the twice-daily shuttle bus to Maranello. Phew! Phase one complete. 😅

For the Tifosi (Ferrari’s worldwide group of fanatics), Maranello is the Mecca of motorsport. The museum displays a ridiculous number of fast cars, ranging from their early (and incredibly cute) racing cars to modern Formula 1 cars.

As impressive as the display of vehicles was, if I’m honest, I was a little disappointed at the lack of behind-the-scenes stories that I had hoped might accompany the displays. Every info panel just told us how the cars were skilfully hand-made using the finest machinery, producing works of art by following strict scientific processes. It reminded me of a typical brewery tour, where every brewery always claims to combine only the finest ingredients with great care and attention. Sara seemed to lose the plot at one point, and spent a few minutes reading an information panel in Italian before realising that it was about as useful as the English language translation (note: Sara doesn’t speak Italian).

Still, it was really cool to see the Ferrari F1 cars from the Schumacher era that dominated the sport during my childhood, as well as the largest F1 trophy cabinet in existence. After all, no Formula 1 team has won more races, drivers’ or constructors’ championships than Scuderia-Ferrari.

Even though Maranello is less than 100 km from the Imola circuit (which hosts the San Marino / Emilia Romagna F1 Grand Prix), Ferrari have built a private race circuit at Maranello to test top-secret designs for their cars behind closed doors. It was pretty cool to peer over the fence at this legendary place.

After a quick lunch and a shuttle bus back to Modena, it was time to check out the second museum of the day; the Enzo Ferrari museum. In contrast to Modena’s museum, this one focused on the man himself, whose lifetime’s achievements were summarised in a projected film in a matter of minutes. The movie started with his boyhood captivation with the local street races, and went on to describe the founding of the business which grew into the Ferrari brand that we know today, despite being interrupted by no less than two world wars.

The museum is partly housed in Enzo Ferrari’s family home (where he was born and first started tuning Alfa Romeos for racing), and partly in a vast new hanger which had ample space for many more cars. The building was rather elegantly nestled behind Enzo Ferrari’s first workshop, and modelled after a sports car’s rear engine cover.

Of the two, the Enzo Ferrari museum was actually our favourite, despite it being less popular than the museum in Maranello. Having said that, we really did enjoy selecting our two favourite cars (mine was the iconic F40, Sara’s was the cute blue 340MM) from the sea of expensive cars in Maranello.

Despite the tight schedule, I was relieved that we pulled off the plan and got to see both museums in a single day. We finally completed our journey with one more train to reach Bologna, home of the world-famous Ragù 🍝

Parma was designated a UNESCO City of Gastronomy in 2004 – a deserved title considering that a whopping 30.5% of Parmesans are employed in food-related industries (that’s “Parmesan” as in the people of Parma, not the famous cheese – I imagine that 100% of Parmigiano Reggiano are involved in the food industry).

To get to Parma, we first set off on a marathon 8-hour bus journey from Aix-en-Provence to Reggio Emilia. We then transferred to two regional trains and doubled back on ourselves to reach our destination.

Neither of us had been particularly looking forward to the long bus ride, but having prepared plenty of reading material and podcasts to keep us busy, the journey seemed to fly by. We also passed some stunning scenery on the French and Italian Riviera as we sped by on the cliffs way above.

Arriving in Parma that evening, we grabbed a couple of Neapolitan pizzas to eat in the Piazza della Pace – a grassy public square facing the Palazzo della Pilotta. This 16th-century palace has a rather tortured history, but today is now home to a gallery, a theatre and two museums.

Parma is a beautiful small city with a seemingly slow pace of life and surprisingly few visitors. Nowhere felt busy, and every turn revealed a new cobbled street of ochre buildings with shutters to hide from the intense afternoon sun.

If I’m honest, we didn’t make it very far around the streets of Parma before our minds turned to food. We’d read about Da Pepèn; a local institution that churns out 23 varieties of sandwiches, so we joined the quintessentially Italian rabble inside the shop, half of whom were queuing to order and the other half waiting to receive their sandwiches. Top marks if you can guess who is who!

We ordered one panini with Parma ham, mayonnaise and pickled vegetables and another with bresaola (aged, air-dried, salted beef), oil, lemon juice, mayonnaise, parmesan cheese and grilled courgette. Both arrived satisfyingly deep filled and surrounded by bread so crispy that I lost half of it as crumbs, deposited on the cathedral steps where we were sitting.

In our typical style, the city’s main sights were already closing for the afternoon by the time we’d finished lunch, so we took a stroll out to Parco della Cittadella – a modern park within the walls of a 16th century fortress.

On our way out of the park we came across Gelateria Floridita – a pristine and calm neighbourhood gelato shop. Sara ordered a dark chocolate gelato in a cone, which was intensely rich and bitter but perfectly complemented by the sweetness of the cone. Meanwhile, I ordered a single scoop of lemon gelato, which was sharp and zingy to the point that it made my taste buds ache. Both were absolutely outstanding, and probably in our top five ice creams ever.

My gelato seemed to evaporate in seconds, so while Sara slowly painted her face with hers, I looked up the difference between gelato and ice cream. We learned that there are three key differences:

1. Gelato is made with a higher ratio of milk-to-cream than ice cream, and no eggs. In my mind, this practically makes gelato a health food.
2. Gelato is stored at a slightly higher temperature than ice cream. This gives it an almost sticky texture, and means that it begins to melt immediately upon leaving the gelateria.
3. Gelato is churned more slowly than ice cream. This captures less air inside the gelato, giving it a smoother and more indulgent consistency.

In addition to its rich food culture, Parma has no shortage of religious masterpieces. Its elaborate cathedral (left) dates from 1106, while the 16th century Chiesa di San Giovanni Evangelista appears comparatively restrained, but still stunning in its own right. Both were so peaceful and incredibly atmospheric to enter.

For dinner, we headed out to a local Osteria to try a few more Parma specialities. We started by sharing some bruschette (simple perfection) and a plate of spalla cruda (cured pork shoulder), which was surprisingly leathery, but beautifully glossy and very tasty. We washed this down with some Lambrusco – a sparking red wine, which was a first for me! For our mains, I ordered a porcini mushroom and sausage bomba di riso (baked rice pie), which was both meaty and cheesy, and Sara had a plate of tortelli di zucca (pumpkin pasta parcels). I’ve since learned that these are traditional winter and autumnal dishes respectively, but what can I say, they were on the menu! Anyway, it’s nice to try some food from other seasons, since we’ve ended up in Italy in peak summertime for the second year running 😅

As if Parma couldn’t get any more atmospheric, on our way back to the apartment we caught part of a classical music recital coming from within the Casa della Musica. The music was clearly audible from outside, since all of the building’s doors and windows had been opened, presumably to encourage even the slightest breeze to provide some respite from the summer heat. It was beautiful and layered even more character onto the dimly-lit, cobbled streets.

Beyond Parma, I’d planned an ambitious travel day on our way to Bologna featuring stops at both Modena’s Enzo Ferrari Museum, and Maranello’s Ferrari Museum. It was only once we’d left our apartment in Parma that it occurred to me that the day ran a serious risk of turning into another Debed Canyon mis-adventure… More on this next time!