Trip to Faenza and Brisighella


Trip to Faenza and Brisighella

Friday, July 2nd, 2021

It’s been about 6 weeks since I did a blog post. I guess that during all of the Covid restrictions I didn’t have much to write about that seemed particularly interesting. But with lifting of a lot of restrictions (we can quit wearing masks when we are not in an enclosed space – yipee!) it was time to take a little trip.

After months of lockdowns of various severity we have been looking forward to making a little trip – just for a change of scenery. Like the trip that we made in February before another lockdown was in place. Laura suggested Faenza and also a little town, Brisighella in the hills not far away from there. It turns out that I had been to Brisighella before with my friend Liu’ but I never knew the name. There are photos of the upper town on that post. So on the last day of June we headed east for a day of diversion. Faenza is known for ceramics and we wanted to go to a major ceramics museum there. Brisighella is one of the lists of the 10 most beautiful little towns in Italy.

The google maps GPS has a serious flaw, at least in the Italian version – the instructions (as in turn here, etc.) are often truncated and/or unintelligible which makes them relatively useless unless you also can look at the map. This leads to a significant amount of frustration. Still after about 1 1/2 hours we did find ourselves in Brisighella and fortunately a part of the town that I had not seen at all on my other stop there. There’s kind of a lower town (where we were) and an upper town where the Rocca (a fortress) is. So we had a pleasant time wandering around and had a very good lunch before heading off to Faenza.

The little street where we arrived. You can see the fortress (la rocca) that’s in the upper part of the town. Also note that half moon shaped windows on the right.
These strange windows are for a little (very little) street called the via Degli Asini (street of the donkeys).
And here is the street of the donkeys. And yes, there were stables for donkeys here and their owners had living quarters above the stables. It’s still a mystery to me how the donkeys came and went.
There are garden paths that lead from the street below to the upper part of the town – a lot of steps involved.

We didn’t see much of Faenza since our objective was to see the museum and then go back to Bologna before rush hour and hopefully find a parking space not too far from our house. Found the museum with little difficulty because there are a lot of signs showing the directions to take to arrive there. I must say that I was quite disappointed. It’s the way I feel in some museums of modern art. I like modern art in moderation but often find myself asking myself “What the hell is that?” and “Why is it thought to be very special?”. Still it was interesting. The next trip I’d like to go to Forli which is not much further and is said to have a great museum for Art Nouveau.

Contemporary from Japan
Also Japanese
Japanese again
I don’t recall the origin but liked the whimsy
Sometimes just a pleasing form is enough
Interesting construction

And before I leave – a couple of Baci quotes:

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the rest of the world calls a butterfly
Quello che il bruco chiama fine del mondo, il resto del mondo chiama farfalla.

Lao Tze

Love is a friendship that is on fire.
L’amore e’ un’amicizia infuocata.

Jeremy Taylor

What are you up to as the the world starts to open up as the pandemic subsides?

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