Dreaming In Italian

Piazza Maggiore

It was a beautiful Saturday so I went to Piazza Maggiore which I consider to be the real center of town. I was looking around for a little gift for a friend in California for when I return. I really love to wander around on a nice day. It was a T-day when the center is totally closed to any vehicular traffic other than emergency vehicles so everyone is either on foot or on bicycle. Almost all of the stores are open even on Sundays and especially on a beautiful day there are a lots of people walking everywhere. Before long I found a gift that seemed just right so now without a particular purpose I just walked around and took photos. Sometimes they are of things that I’ve passed probably 50 times without really taking note of. So here are the photos.

” I hate everyone” and “Stressed Depressed but Well Dressed”

Juggler

Nice costume on the juggler

Jazz trio

Sitting on the bench eating an excellent gelato and took note of two of several statues nearby – this is one

And this is the other

Art for sale near Piazza Minghetti

Portico ceiling that I hadn’t really noticed before.

A couple of women (Abby and Helen) from Oakland who are friends of mine and my ex-wife came to Bologna last week to spend a week enjoying the city. I had bragged about it and they took my advice. I went with them to aperitivo for their first night in the city at Le Stanze which has a spectacular interior and a great aperitivo buffet. As often happens forgot to take any photos but I snagged one from the web.  

Le Stanze

However the next day I met them at their very nice apartment that they had rented in the center of town and we went to lunch. For a special experience I suggested that we go to Osteria del Sole. I have written about this place once before and it is indeed a special place. How often can you have lunch at a place that has been in operation since 1465? Another thing that very special about this place is that it continues a very old tradition in which an osteria was not a place to eat but only a place to drink. So you cannot buy any food there and I’m not sure that they even have water or soft drinks. You can buy wine and beer but if you want to eat you need to bring your own food. So that’s what we did. We first went to another institution in Bologna, Tamburini, which is a wonderful place to buy all kinds of salumi, cheeses and prepared foods. We bought lasagna made with asparagus and mortadella, tortellini with ragu, a salad made of octopus and potatoes, some kind of desert made with figs and some olives. We had also stopped at a produce stand in the wonderful street Vecchie Pescherie where there is terrific produce as well as all kinds of other foods and bought a little basket of the fantastic strawberries that they have here. At Tamburini they heated those things that should be served hot or at least warm and we took them to the osteria and bought glasses of wine and had a great lunch.

Outside Tamburini

Inside Osteria del Sole (photo from web)

We then walked around in the center a bit including a stop at the Biblioteca Sala Borsa and did a little window shopping. They were awestruck by the beauty of the city and we almost lost Helen who was busy snapping pictures of everything. One stop was at perhaps a little known place inside what I think is called the Palazzo di Enzo. There if you stand in one corner and someone stands in the corner opposite you can talk to each other in a normal tone of voice. It’s some kind acoustic phenomenon that is very special. It’s kind of like kids talking into tin cans with a string attached between them. Kind of magical.

Abby talking to Helen in the opposing corner

That night I met them at their apartment and we took a bus that took us to the restaurant that I’d gone to with the crowd of Italians the previous Saturday for a great meal of seafood specialties accompanied with some nice white wine and followed with a glass of grappa. I was delighted to be a tour guide for them.

Dinner at Trattoria Il Tari’

An acquaintance here, Rosella, sent me a text on Friday asking if I’d like to go with her to a flamenco performance on Sunday. While I haven’t really seen much of it I’ve always found it to be quite dramatic and agreed. So she picked me up near Porta Saragozza and we went off to the performance. The dancer (there was only one) is also a teacher and Rosella said that she was taking flamenco lessons. There were several other flamenco students there as well, most half her age.

The venue was a small deconsecrated church with some nice frescos in front and on the ceiling. The structure of the performance was a harpsichordist, a violinist that seemed to me to be very good, a guitarist, and a guy who I started thinking of as “the professor” who gave little background about the composer before the start of each little segment. Some of the segments were purely instrumental and other included the dance.

I tried taking pictures of the dancer and although my little camera performs quite well in low light without a flash (which would have been terrible to use at such an event) it really couldn’t manage with the movement. In a moment of enlightenment I found that after I quite trying to capture the evening in photos I enjoyment of it was considerably greater. I quite worrying about the future and immersed myself in the enjoyment of the moment. And it was enjoyable, good music and good dance with emotion running through it all.

The front of the church with harpsichord

The ceiling

The “professor”

The dancer

Guitarist – unfortunately I don’t have a photo of the violinist who I thought terrific

Dancer with fan – very dramatic

I don’t really think of this particular Saturday  May 10th as anything particularly special. Hence the title. It did have some interesting points. There was the Mercatino Antiquariato in Piazza Santa Stefano. This is held on the 2nd Saturday and Sunday of each month. Unlike the flea market held every weekend, this is limited to relatively good stuff rather than cheap clothes, kitchenware, etc. I roamed around looking for some little gifts for friends in California (or for myself). While I saw a lot of interesting stuff, there was nothing that really struck me as particularly great so I came away empty handed other than the photographs below.

First sighting of the market.

Some very nice pieces of furniture at this booth

Another nice piece at the same booth

No particular specialization here.

Linens and lace.

Vendors get hungry too.

Vintage British silverware and doctor’s office exhibits at this booth. Strange combination.

A treasure trove for doll collectors.

Looks like you almost have to have an engineering degree to make coffee with this machine.

The very historic Chiesa di Santo Stefano in background. Note that the piazza is made of small stones. Beautiful but tough to walk on.

For collectors of fumetti (comics).

Next I had sent messages back and forth with Vittorio about maybe having dinner together on Saturday night. I had done this several times in the past so when I got a message that we should meet at the pub (which he calls the temple) at 8:30, I knew what to expect. So I got there at 8:30. There were only Vittorio and Barbara (his wife) and a couple of others but he explained that there were others at a bar not too far away. So it proceeded this way. They called or messaged back and forth:

“So how many of us are there?”

“I don’t know yet, we’re expecting a couple of more people to show up. So at about 9:30 they decided that they had the final total so now a different conversation ensued:

“OK, we have a head count of 14, where do you want to go?”

“I’ll ask the others here.”

“We have these choices but need to find out where we can reserve a table for 14 this time of night.”

So finally at about 10:30 everything was settled and we were ready for the trek  to the restaurant. It was about a mile away and I walked there with Davide while others came mostly by motorino (motor scooter). So we all arrived at about 11:00 at a restaurant that was thankfully in the direction of where I live. The waitress was a real kick and very expressive with her hands and a great sense of humor when describing the specials for the evening. The specialty of the restaurant was seafood done in a southern Italian style.

The dinner. Front right is the crazy waitress and Carlo il texano is standing. The other Carlo is taking the photo and I don’t know where Davide went.

So we had a great dinner, followed of course by coffee and a variety of liquors, some made in house by the chef. A good time was had by all. We finally rolled out of the place at 2:00 in the morning and I walked home accompanied much of the way by Carlo, who I call Carlo il texano since he has kind of a cowboy look and gait. I really slept well after this second mile walk.