DAY 1 - CUTE ITALIAN GUIDE

We started our Italian adventure by flying from San Francisco to Frankfurt to Milan. During our 3 hour layover in Frankfurt, we passed our time in Lufthansa's Business Class lounge. The best thing there was a hot shower - It helped refresh us after having only a few hours sleep on our 10 hour flight. The next best thing was a German hot dog for lunch - it was almost as good as a Caspers! It had a casing that popped on the first bite. The fun part of eating a hot dog is what you put on it, so I heaped on some crunchy thingies (bacon bits?), catsup and some lettuce salad.

On the train ride to Bologna, Giulia, a cute young Italian woman, sat across from us, and Marge struck up a conversation with her. Her English was quite good - we only had to occasionally correct her English, which she didn't mind because she wanted to improve her English. She was an industrial engineer, 2 years out of Bologna University, working for Exxon Oil company in Milan. It was fun talking to her, aided by the fact that she was attractive and unpretentious. It was a really nice way to get a flavor of Italy, talking to her about the Catholic church, the Italian economy, Bologna, and her home town of Riimini on the Adriatic coast. She was also headed to Bologna, so she shared the names of some of her favorite restaurants with us, and when we got to Bologna, she showed us the way to our hotel.

ORDERING ITALIAN - CHINESE STYLE: We arrived at our hotel at 7:30 pm, dropped off our bags, then joined the rest of our group at a Trattoria around the corner from our hotel. We thought it would be fun to order an assortment of dishes, then share them family style. We had several kinds of pasta, wild boar, salad, veggies and several bottles of house wine for a very reasonable price of 20 E/person, about $26 each. Now we knew in our tummies that we were in Italy!