I never knew what to make of Bologna before my first visit. I’ve made one than one stop in this city because I found it to be a great base for travelling to other parts of Italy. Flying into Bologna is so easy and making your way to the main train station is straightforward even for the novice traveller. At the time I didn’t speak understand much Italian and had absolutely no problems navigating. Bologna is a student city so very easy to find your way around with great signage. The train station has a storage locker facility which was perfect for dropping my bags off when i’d checked out of the hotel.
My first stay was about a 8-10 min walk from the train station. A small hotel and due to it’s location was regarded to be one of the more quieter ones – Hotel Atlantic. The hotel was more of a simplistic side, nice old fashioned large room keys. The room itself was spacious and clean, but two things kept me awake – first was the buzzing from the AC (my room was close to the top of the building, and secondly the constant Red light blinking above my bed (smoke alarm). There are some parts to be avoided during the night, some of those areas had great restaurants so either visit them in the daytime or take a taxi to drop you off and pick you up. As a solo traveller I simply visited during the day at lunchtime. I wanted to avoid the lively areas close to the centre shopping district or the train station as I’d researched they could be very noisy at night.
This is to give you a view of my evening walk back to the hotel. One tip – I arrived at around 10pm at night, make sure that you eat dinner before leaving the airport, or at the train station as there wasn’t much to open so late at night. There was a tiny bar across the road which had local pastries and a small grocery store, I ended up eating a Snickers bar and a packet of crisps as my evening meal.
I spent a couple of days shopping, my hotel was about a 10 min stroll into the main shopping area.
As a base location I have explored Florence, Lake Garda and Venice (see my Venice post), I’d also planned to visit Parma but didn’t get around to it.