Bologna - Night Life

While reading about the city on internet, came across many facets of its life, including night life and its connction with Immigrant Students.

It is said that the city enjoys a vibrant night life and there are clubs offering discounts on party nights to the immigrant students. So guess the winner can celebrate his win over there !

This bit of trivia, although not connected to biking, just could not resist to share

Great pictures of the beautiful city.

Would want to ask one question to you Sunny, how does it feel to ride the paved streets of the city ? Here in Mumbai most of the riders blame paver blocks as the cause for a slip during rains.

cheers!

beautiful pictures sunny, really beautiful.

Sunny. Your pics just go out of this world. Each one outshines the other and even if you dont write the story your pics by themselves tell it all. Enjoying every bit of Italy thru your lens. Great going and waiting for more

I was expecting some excellent pics, but these r just avg. nothing spl.

far better pics can be found on net.

spoiled the whole thrill.

@It's me - On the internet we can find the best and the worst too, the endeavour here is to live the moment through pics and blogs which Sunny and Anurag sir are living back in Italy and neighbouring places.
I am sure you'll be thrilled with more pics and experiences yet to come...

Now we got some quality stuff. This is what I love about Europe. The way they have preserved their country, their heritage, imagine a university dating from a millennium ago. Look at the unison of colours, designs, shapes, structures, it is simply breathtaking.

Really! I would like to see your "far better photographs" of Bologna "on net"!!! Some of these photographs are really good if not brilliant. Composition is great, colours are wonderful. Maybe he can go less on the HDR treatment part.

Day 8 - The Great Italian Roadtrip - Bologna to Florence - Under the Tuscon Sun

Completely refreshed with a day's rest, our next destination was Florence (Firenze in Italian) some 120 kilometers away. Florence is the capital of Tuscany, which is an extremely beautiful region of Italy. Florence lies on the banks of River Arno and is known for its history and its importance in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, especially for its art and architecture. It is in a valley surrounded by hills.

We were under no pressure to leave Bologna since this route was to be done leisurely and also carefully. A kind soul had warned us on day one at the Ducati factory about this route. It was AutoStrada all the way and the traffic was supposed to be awful with lots of mad truck drivers around. We had shrugged our shoulders since the fella did not know where we come from - who can beat an Indian who is challenged by a TATA truck on our highways! nevertheless, we had this at the back of our mind.

We got up around 8 and I think our body clock has adjusted to getting up at this time since even if the alarm is set to later, we are up before 8, got ready and went for breakfast by 9:30. The hotel did not allow us a late checkout which we wanted so that we could complete the Trip Day 2 blog and upload it before leaving and so we hurried back to the room and packed and paired Sunny's brand new Cardo Scala Rider G4 with mine which I had bought during my earlier trip in the US. We met at the lobby at 12 noon, all packed and ready. The shopping we had done earlier in Milan came in handy and wiser from our first leg, we reduced the stuff to be carried considerably by leaving every ounce that we considered extra in the suitcase that was to be left behind at the hotel. For starters, I do not have to carry the Lowepro Computracker on my shoulder anymore (what a relief) and now I have a tail bag which holds all my camera gear plus important papers. The side panniers were also considerably lightened. Sunny similarly also reduced his load.

We spread our computer gear in the reception area of the hotel and prepped the day 2 blog. There is a lot of work involved and goes in to prep and review even a day's blog. the text is reviewed (I complete all the text at the end of the day in order not to forget anything), pictures are prepared and processed after a selection from the lot that we take, then it takes at-least 1 minute to insert a picture on the blog using the automatic tool. A lot of time goes in sorting them and placing them in contextually the correct place (There were about 70 pictures in Venice day 2 blog for example, each carefully selected, prepared and linked). We managed to complete this only by 4 PM even though we had wanted to do so by 3. We have to be sure of the quality of what we post and therefore there is a lag between the day of the trip and the update of it on the blog, after all, we are so used to the bouquets coming our way that we cannot take a change that they become brickbats if the quality falls.

We put on our helmets and tested the ScalaRider communication and boy what a delightful feeling we had. As we rolled out, we were able to constantly communicate with each other. This thing works even when two riders are 1.5 kilometers away!!!! This thing is designed to connect to the mobile phone to route incoming calls to your helmet, work as an intercom between upto 4 riders, plays FM radio and also MP3 music in full stereo. Kudos to the folks at Cardo for coming up with such a brilliant device. We avoided many wrong turns, abrupt halts and kind of constantly chattered away about almost everything on the road and the trip - I strongly recommended this device for the hardcore touring xBhp fraternity. It makes life so simple in group riding and also allows to be in touch on the phone as we go. We did not take any pictures on the way as AutoStrada is kind of boring place to click !

after about 60 kilometers, the bikes signaled that they were hungry and we realized that so were we! Well, about 1.5 Km away, we found a gas station at Roncobilaccio Ovrest and stopped to give the bikes a hearty fill of benzina. Then Sunny went and got some stuff to eat that we gladly did and started again towards Florence which was another 60 Kilometers away. It rained on the way twice and we crossed many tunnels along the way. We kept cruising within the speed limits all along chatting away to glory on our Scala. At approximately 7 PM, we rolled into our B&B l'Artentiere with Sunny's TomTom working OK for a change.

After checking in, we discovered that the Aircon in the room we were given was pathetic. We were sweating and the damn thing refused to cool us down. On top of it, we were having a nightmare in connecting to the Internet and so we kept complaining like hell to Edward, a Sri Lankan who runs this place and he agreed to change our room. After moving our stuff to the new room we headed out to savor the beautiful sights of Florence!

We decided to cover Piazza Michelangelo which is on a hill on the south bank of the Arno River, just east of the center of Florence.

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Designed in 1869 by Poggi, it offers a great view of the city which a beautiful bronze statue of Michelangelo lords over. It was twilight and this place and we clicked a lot of pictures to take advantage of this light.

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Once satisfied, we decided to have dinner at a road side cafe just besides the piazza. I had a delectable Spaghetti with tomato base and a liberal sprinkling of cherry tomatoes whereas, Sunny had a large Pizza. We then turned and headed east on Viale Michelangelo, a tree lined, twisting and turning road offering perfect curves to ride on a bike, specially for bending and leaning! We loved this part of the ride. We headed for Ponte Vecchio - An old bridge and parked our bikes at a designated parking just besides this bridge.

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For the benefit of folks planning to visit Italy in general and Florence in particular on motorbikes, I will provide here information that is not available on another place on the Internet. There is loads of information available on parking / entry time restrictions and fines and cameras and different systems of parking in this city which are all true for people visiting by cars! Bikes can go practically anywhere, even in the city center and there is no parking fee anywhere, no sticker required. Just be careful not to enter roads designated for pedestrians and one way streets, after this life is easy (for bikers). You ofcourse will need to be careful about speed limits and respect the speed limit signs and specially the radar signs posted for your benefit - if you don't, you will be surprised when the fine arrives. So guys, those contemplating to drive down here, save your money on car rentals and hire a bike instead, you will enjoy the sights and sounds better and also save a lot of walking and money!!

We took are camera gear in hand, ready to shoot and shoot we did. The bridge is amazing and so are the shops that line it. We walked on and Sunny kept taking panning shots of people riding vespa scooters (Some of them are classic!) as we walked, soon we reached Piazza della Signoria.

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This was lurking on a right turn one block away from the Ponte Vecchio and into an L Shaped courtyard called Palazzo Vecchio. From 14th century, Palazzo Vecchio has a fortress from Roman times and a huge tower to see the enemy from afar and this square is also shared with many other Florentine landmarks such as Loggia della Signoria, the Uffizi Gallery, the Palace of the Tribunale della Mercanzia, and the Uguccioni Palace (facade probably by Raphael). Located in front of the Palazzo Vecchio is the Palace of the Assicurazioni Generali. Just besides the Palazzo Vecchio is a huge statue of David done by Michelangelo.

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For the benefit of the discerning readers, I encourage you to read about these places on wikipedia or on other websites specializing on Italy, it's rich history, cultural diversity etc., as I am not a history buff and would be doing a lot of copy paste which will defeat the purpose of this blog, which is essentially a travelogue.

We spent a good 1 1/2 hour or more trying to capture as much of this important landmark and then decided to call it a day. It took us another 30 odd minutes to reach our bikes and after taking more panning shots of scooters passing by we made a small photo shoot with the Streetfighter.

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Close to midnight, we started for our digs, which was just a few minutes away. We spent more time at the computer and slept at approx. 5AM IST!!

Until tomorrow....

Our Blog Approved

woah! nice!

Enjoying every bit of it. Its like going back in time.

The pics are simply brilliant.

On behalf of Sunny, Thanks mate!

Haroon, It is a pleasure to see your comments, crisp and precise! Thanks buddy.

I am glad you liked it, thanks.

Now that's something that one can expect from The G?R. Amazing logs along with Ravishing Pics...

Ah, Firenze! How I simply LOVE Toscan! Tuscany is really close to my heart, San Gimignano, Siena, Volterra with the red tiled roofs, the limestone buildings, and of course the heart and soul of the Renaissance. The David of Michelangelo that you saw outside is a copy made by I-do-not-remember-who during the same period. The original is kept inside the museum in Firenze itself.

Nice Writeup Anurag Sir.. Loved the pics..

Waiting for more