Day 5 - Monday - Bologna to Pavia
Waking up in Bologna left us a bit grumpy, but since we were going to the Ducati museum, we were happily distracted. Of course, on the way to Ducati, we got delayed, and then when we got to the factory, the parking was a nightmare, and I just got grumpier and grumpier until I was practically a demon when we finally got parked and rocked up to guard, the tour had already left. I nearly had an entire breakdown, but thankfully they just let us join. The tour was as charming as it was nearly 10 years ago when I went last! The factory itself is like Santa's workshop for adults - they can't smoke now, but they still have the same moving tracks to keep the guys working, and the same trolleys to be loaded up with all the tiny pieces to build a beautiful bike. Oh, and the delicious sounds of the bikes being tested - there's something sweet about hearing a bike being started for the first time. All the way through the level of attention to detail is still impressive, as is the general feeling of good humour. A lovely morning.
We were happy to get out of Bologna, I have to say. Lots of women of questionable virtue, even as we leaving. Next destination was to be Pavia, a little village outside Milan, but on the way, we thought we'd nip into Maranello to check out Ferraris. Neither of us really want one, but it's like a magnetic pull. When we found the factory and the museum, we were suddenly surrounded by Ferraris - it was like the whole village of Ferrari drivers. Right beside the museum is a lot of Ferraris, attended to by a bunch of girls in tight tight tops, Now, I must have been hungry (or deluded) because I actually pointed out that LD could rent one! A few long minutes later, and LD was signed up for some serious time in a California. They ended up bringing us out to their other lot to pick it up, and a nice, if not very talkative, man gave LD a 4 minute walkthrough on how it all worked, and then hopped in beside him - the deal being that LD could drive so long as the nice man was in the car. To be honest, it seems like a mad idea to me, but everyone else seemed very comfortable with it, so I just shrugged and went along with it. I was instructed to take ALL the photos and endevour to video the whole transaction with one of our multitudinous iPhones, but really, I was just eager to get into a nearby cafe and have lunch. A short time later, I was full of food and LD came back beaming. By all accounts, it had been marvellous, with the quiet smiling man urging LD to drive FASTER (not slower) and some lovely moments on motorways and under tunnels. I'd post the footage from the drive, but I understand it depicts my husband engaged in some seriously illegal behaviour and would therefore be evidence in criminal proceedings (when you get the CD from the company, it helpfully suggests that you consider this before posting your video on YouTube).
Replete, we drove on towards Pavia, Motorways in Italy are not exactly awe-inspiring - they are just insanely fast (140kph, anyone). It's far more restful that city driving, since everyone's pootling along at the same crazy pace. The only moments of chaos are at toll booths. Well, chaos for us anyway - "do we need money for this one or do we just get a ticket?" "Is this our lane or not?" "Did you just drop the money down the side of your seat? That's all we have!". But it was all made better by the automated voice saying "Arriverderci" (such an impossibly sexy word), which we would sing back to it and then zoom off into the distance.
It's worth mentioning that Italian radio leaves a lot to be desired - it's all talk radio, with very little music (as far as we could find) and so we were limited to our CD micro-collection. Sadly, we made some terrible errors in selecting our CDs for the trip - the up-energy heavy rock and urban beats were completely wrong for the countryside (a fact we had realised while arriving at Lake Garda to some urban track which suggested a lot of "banging"), so we were limited to a three-CD chillout collection. This was a fairly mediocre collection, which had a few good songs, but also contained a lot of whining, and the Adele song "Hometown", which I find both irritating and incredibly sad. By this early stage in the trip we had already vowed to purchase music as soon as we saw it. but I will reveal to you now that in our entire trip we never found any. Is Italy hiding its music shops from us?
Anyway, late afternoon we arrived in Pavia and found our hotel, which was small but friendly (nice to get out of the chain hotels for a night). We lay on the bed exhausted and it was only on my insistence that we got up and went for dinner. After the disaster that had been the previous night's hunt for a restaurant, I looked up a restaurant in my guide book, and found a nice "family run" place in the town. We walked through Pavia, loving the chilled university feel in the gorgeous cobble streets and ancient facades, and found our restaurant Osteria Della Madonna del Pio down a side street.
I felt a bit nervous when we found a girl doing her homework at the computer near the front door, and a staff who spoke no english, but they printed an english version of the menu for us, to save our guide-book-italian-equipt struggles and left us to it. Thankfully, there was a "chefs choice" tasting menu, which we were happy to order, even though they raised their eyebrows a bit, and so the food started to arrive. Huge antipasta with meats, anchovies, pickled vegetables that I couldn't recognise and lots of bread, all arriving on plates and boards which filled our table. Then the first course (probably my favourite) - a delicious homemade pasta in tomato sauce, a lentil soup and the most divine red-wine risotto. I still think of that risotto with fondness. Oh, and enORmous portions - easily two serious main courses worth. But then it was time for meats, including a very tasty goulash. We were really struggling at this point, but by slow, steady eating, we made some serious inroads. As they took away the plates, we were able to communicate that we needed some recovery time before we'd be able to roll towards the door, and we sipped the local white wine (nyom) and tried not to move too much. They let us sit for as long as we wanted, and when we gave the nod, they brought us, not the bill, as expected, but more food - desert in the form of small slices of three cakes, including a chocolate mousse cake which I loved. They seemed genuinely surprised that we couldn't manage coffee and whatever else they were going to bring us, but it would have been a physical impossibility to manage even a wafer-thin mint. We walked, very slowly, back to the hotel and slept.
We were happy to get out of Bologna, I have to say. Lots of women of questionable virtue, even as we leaving. Next destination was to be Pavia, a little village outside Milan, but on the way, we thought we'd nip into Maranello to check out Ferraris. Neither of us really want one, but it's like a magnetic pull. When we found the factory and the museum, we were suddenly surrounded by Ferraris - it was like the whole village of Ferrari drivers. Right beside the museum is a lot of Ferraris, attended to by a bunch of girls in tight tight tops, Now, I must have been hungry (or deluded) because I actually pointed out that LD could rent one! A few long minutes later, and LD was signed up for some serious time in a California. They ended up bringing us out to their other lot to pick it up, and a nice, if not very talkative, man gave LD a 4 minute walkthrough on how it all worked, and then hopped in beside him - the deal being that LD could drive so long as the nice man was in the car. To be honest, it seems like a mad idea to me, but everyone else seemed very comfortable with it, so I just shrugged and went along with it. I was instructed to take ALL the photos and endevour to video the whole transaction with one of our multitudinous iPhones, but really, I was just eager to get into a nearby cafe and have lunch. A short time later, I was full of food and LD came back beaming. By all accounts, it had been marvellous, with the quiet smiling man urging LD to drive FASTER (not slower) and some lovely moments on motorways and under tunnels. I'd post the footage from the drive, but I understand it depicts my husband engaged in some seriously illegal behaviour and would therefore be evidence in criminal proceedings (when you get the CD from the company, it helpfully suggests that you consider this before posting your video on YouTube).
Replete, we drove on towards Pavia, Motorways in Italy are not exactly awe-inspiring - they are just insanely fast (140kph, anyone). It's far more restful that city driving, since everyone's pootling along at the same crazy pace. The only moments of chaos are at toll booths. Well, chaos for us anyway - "do we need money for this one or do we just get a ticket?" "Is this our lane or not?" "Did you just drop the money down the side of your seat? That's all we have!". But it was all made better by the automated voice saying "Arriverderci" (such an impossibly sexy word), which we would sing back to it and then zoom off into the distance.
It's worth mentioning that Italian radio leaves a lot to be desired - it's all talk radio, with very little music (as far as we could find) and so we were limited to our CD micro-collection. Sadly, we made some terrible errors in selecting our CDs for the trip - the up-energy heavy rock and urban beats were completely wrong for the countryside (a fact we had realised while arriving at Lake Garda to some urban track which suggested a lot of "banging"), so we were limited to a three-CD chillout collection. This was a fairly mediocre collection, which had a few good songs, but also contained a lot of whining, and the Adele song "Hometown", which I find both irritating and incredibly sad. By this early stage in the trip we had already vowed to purchase music as soon as we saw it. but I will reveal to you now that in our entire trip we never found any. Is Italy hiding its music shops from us?
Anyway, late afternoon we arrived in Pavia and found our hotel, which was small but friendly (nice to get out of the chain hotels for a night). We lay on the bed exhausted and it was only on my insistence that we got up and went for dinner. After the disaster that had been the previous night's hunt for a restaurant, I looked up a restaurant in my guide book, and found a nice "family run" place in the town. We walked through Pavia, loving the chilled university feel in the gorgeous cobble streets and ancient facades, and found our restaurant Osteria Della Madonna del Pio down a side street.
I felt a bit nervous when we found a girl doing her homework at the computer near the front door, and a staff who spoke no english, but they printed an english version of the menu for us, to save our guide-book-italian-equipt struggles and left us to it. Thankfully, there was a "chefs choice" tasting menu, which we were happy to order, even though they raised their eyebrows a bit, and so the food started to arrive. Huge antipasta with meats, anchovies, pickled vegetables that I couldn't recognise and lots of bread, all arriving on plates and boards which filled our table. Then the first course (probably my favourite) - a delicious homemade pasta in tomato sauce, a lentil soup and the most divine red-wine risotto. I still think of that risotto with fondness. Oh, and enORmous portions - easily two serious main courses worth. But then it was time for meats, including a very tasty goulash. We were really struggling at this point, but by slow, steady eating, we made some serious inroads. As they took away the plates, we were able to communicate that we needed some recovery time before we'd be able to roll towards the door, and we sipped the local white wine (nyom) and tried not to move too much. They let us sit for as long as we wanted, and when we gave the nod, they brought us, not the bill, as expected, but more food - desert in the form of small slices of three cakes, including a chocolate mousse cake which I loved. They seemed genuinely surprised that we couldn't manage coffee and whatever else they were going to bring us, but it would have been a physical impossibility to manage even a wafer-thin mint. We walked, very slowly, back to the hotel and slept.