Keeping cool in Bologna

So now I'm in Bologna.  The month in Sicily with Libera Terra ended yesterday, and, after collecting last bits of research, packing up my stuff, reminding my housemates that if they want the basil plant to live they need to water it, and saying goodbye to everyone and their mother (literally: Leo called his mother on his cell phone so that I could say goodbye to her, too), I flew out of Palermo and up to Bologna.

Here I'm staying in a B&B and rambling around the city in a low-key, relaxed sort of way.  The tourist office gives out not only free maps, but an EXCELLENT (and also free!) guide book with descriptions of different themed walking tours, including one on green spaces.  So I took a long walk around to see the Parco della Montagnola, the Orto Botanico (botanic garden!), and the Giardini Margherita.   Along the way I ran into a book sale, where I very firmly reminded myself that I Do Not Need Another Book to Carry Home with Me before buying one anyway (Cosimicomiche, a book of physics/science-inspired, whimsical, clever short fiction by Italo Calvino, an author I really like.  Totally worth having to find room for it in my suitcase).  And then I passed a farmer's market and asked for a peach to eat right away--it was delicious, and the man cheerfully refused to let me pay him for it.  So I munched on it as I wandered up into Parco della Montagnola, where I sat on a bench by a fountain and read my book for a while.  The statuary around the fountain was a little puzzling.  There were a pair of lounging mermaids (not the usual delicate sort--if Athena were a mermaid, she would look like these),

a lion who was maybe supposed to look fierce (but mostly looked startled) crouched over a dead ox, another pair of lounging mermaids, another lion with a serpent twined around it, crouched over a dead horse, and, in the middle of the pond: three stone turtles.  I'm sure there must be some kind very profound symbolism there.  Or something.  There was also some excellent graffiitti:

I  had a conversation with an elderly Italian man who came by on his daily walk through the park.  He  used to be a doctor, and spent time in both France and California.  At the moment he's lonely because his daughter and grandkids are off at the beach and he has no one to talk to.  He called me Emilia, thanked me profusely for letting him share the bench and talk for a while, and said goodbye (complete with handshakes and cheek kisses and thankyous and have a good rest of the day) at least three times over the course of the conversation before he actually got up and left.

A little while later I walked about ten minutes down the road to the botanic garden of the University of Bologna, which was lovely, and took some pictures:

sat in the shade there for a while, as it was by then getting to be nearly midday and HOT.  And after that I walked across town, admiring (and appreciating) the portici that shade nearly all of the sidewalks in Bologna:

and on to the Giardini Margherita, where I had lunch at a little table overlooking a pond full of more (live!) turtles than I have ever seen in one place before.  And then, since it was still hot and humid, I spent most of the afternoon stretched out on the grass in the shade, napping and reading and flicking the occasional ant off the back of my neck.  There was even a bit of a breeze.  And then I took a leisurely walk back, and a shower.

I like Bologna a lot.  It feels very modern and active, full of rasta-haired, crunchy-granola university students, public parks, free concerts/movies in piazzas, and differentiated trash/recycling.

Tomorrow evening I'll be taking a bus overnight from here to Taize, the international monastery in France, where I'll spend a week before heading home via Florence.  Not B&B home.  Not apartment in San Giuseppe home.  Not Florence home.  Home home.  Really home.  Makes me smile just thinking about it.  : D