A day in two parts, so two entries. Sadly, our last in Bologna, a city which, in a very short time, we have come to love. For the people, for the food, for the sense of style, for the history, for the colonnades. For our lovely little apartment, so close to everything, and yet so quiet. For once Rick Steves - who doesn't even include Bologna in his book- got it completely and absolutely wrong. And maybe that is a good thing, because while there were tourists in Bologna, it was no where near the commercialism we were soon to see in Milano. In particular, and in hindsight , the streets were missing the immigrant sellers every few metres - of which more in the next episode. Bologna's one flaw was its bread. We may just have been unlucky, but the bread we had everywhere had an extremely dry crust and a fluffy and unsubstantial interior. Nothing to chew on. A small and pardonable sin.

We passed the morning after our 10 minute pack up - the benefit of a small flat and 2 small bags - in a final amble with breakfast and picking up a couple of small items including some lovely etchings, which if you are good, we may invite you up to see some time! There is a photo of the artist in her shop in the album. Giancarlo cycled over in good time and we bid him a fond farewell as we set off to walk to the station. Bologna station is huge, including new platforms for the high speed trains which seem to be in the bowels of the earth, but we made it in good time and, after encouraging a couple of folks to find their own seats - assuming they had them - we settled in for the rapid trip to Milano, hitting 300kph at times.

See the next entry for the beginning of our Milanese chapter.