Walk around central Bologna

After a week resting at Luisella's to give my back a chance to recover, I took my first outing to Bologna - 40 minutes away on the train from Mirandola where we're staying. (Marilena, it should be said has been going out every day with her sister) ;-) What a marvellous jewel the city turned out to be! Not unlike Turin, Bologna is not a specially popular venue for those touring Italy; but they're missing a lot.

Garisenda and Asinelli towers. Towers are in evidence all over the centre of town.
The two in the photo are the best known - but others  (less dramatic) pop up all over.

Bologna is very old indeed and everywhere we went we found ourselves gaping at one extraordinary building after another. It's rather as if someone has laid a medieval town on top of a modern city (or should that be the other way round?). Extraordinary.
The city is famous for its porticoes and its towers. We walked around for around six hours or so - with a couple of breaks for lunch and a coffee. Much of that time was spent walking through porticoes - they go on and on. And of course they provided excellent shade on a sunny day. Most of the porticoes are lined with shops and unlike the UK there were few chain stores which made for more interesting window shopping.

We walked along kilometres of porticoes like these.

Bologna is situated in Emiglia Romagna, Italy's bread basket. And the shops
displayed plenty of examples of local produce.The photo shows Parma ham in a grocer's.

Breads are delicious here - we had flat bread with our lunch. Mmm.

As ever, wet fish over here is super fresh and most appealing.

We visited Bologna University - the oldest in Europe.

The town is flat, so unsurprisingly lots of people cycle.