Globetrotter Travel A to Z
The A — Z of My Favourite Travel Destinations — I is for Italy
Trieste and Bologna
In 2017, my wife and I went for a walk. We were in the small city of Sopron in Hungary. In the early morning when there was enough light, we left the small apartment we had rented for the night and walked to a nearby park at the southwestern edge of the city. We stopped for the customary photo of the two of us at the entrance of a hiking trail. Our destination was Italy. For the next three weeks we hiked through Hungary, bits of Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia with the destination being Trieste, Italy.
At the time I was sixty-eight and she was sixty-seven. We had walked the Camino in Spain two years earlier so we knew we could do it though the walk wasn’t a pilgrimage. It was more like an intensive endurance test. We carried everything in our backpacks. More than 500 kilometres in 19 days of actual backpacking. We had a day’s rest in Ljubljana along the way.
By the time we were able to enter Italy on foot, we were exhausted. It wasn’t our first time to visit Italy, and we knew ahead of time that it wouldn’t be our last.
We planned on two nights in Trieste before we were to take the train to Bologna, Italy. Why Bologna? There was a statue there that I wanted to capture with my camera, but more about that later. We had a city we had never heard of before to discover.
Of course, Roman ruins were a highlight. We wandered on foot foregoing taxis and buses to discover this seaside city. Our only prior visits to Italy had been in the Val d’Aosta en route to Geneva, Switzerland. Of course, I took way too many photos.
Finally, I got to see the Neptune Fontaine in Bologna. Problem — it was undergoing repairs and most of the structure was hidden behind scaffolding and coverings. There was a tour within the draped scaffolding which I took as I was desperate to get at least one decent photo which appears below.
Then, with that done, it was on to discover as much as we could before our train ride to Venice. Naturally, I had to find a modern statue which became my wife’s favourite.
I am bringing one more photo to this tale, one which was the second photo of a church tower. I took the photo when I saw an opportunity to capture the sun through an opening at the top of the tower.
Our next stop was Venice, but that will have to have a post of its own. Next stop on my A to Z tour will be Juno Beach in France. Now, it is time to recognise three other world travellers here at Globetrotters.
One of my travel destinations to come will be a return to Italy with the city of Florence in mind, especially after watching the Medici series. Here is an excellent take on Florence by Jerry Dwyer.
We always seem to talk about the places, but the stories we have collected about other people are priceless. Here is a gem of a story by Farris Cash
And finally, a different take on travelling by my friend, Dan Carlson | Meandering Naturists.
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