Today was a complete waste from the get-go. I awoke early to attempt to catch the early bird to Venice (which is about 45 minutes from here) and stalled. My feet were quite happy to be in bed and I was generally exhausted. So I went back to sleep. When I awoke, i would have to get the train that put me there about Midday, so I aborted the idea and went back to explore Bologna.

What a boring dump.

The Italy book (which I have come to trust less and less) gives it a decent review, with sites and attractions and shopping and oh how I'm so sick of the same damned thing in every inland town. A castle, some churches, parks full of fountains and sculptures. Cobblestones. “Quaint” streets. Moroccan males of age 25-35 selling trinkets at every second corner (it must be a work visa thing). As fascinating as this trip has been, right now I am completely and utterly fed up with Italy's “attractions”. I'm going to Venice anyway tomorrow (not staying there) and then one last dull night in Ferarra before going somewhere that isn't so samey.

Bologna, it turns out, also has a leaning tower. Unlike Pisa's tower, this thing that looks like a but looks like a brick chimney leans but has no other attraction. It's in the middle of a road, you can't climb it, and the dense buildings around it make it hard to photograph.

Bologna has lots of shops. Expensive shops full of dull stuff. I've been ignoring clothes shops because their prices are the same numnbers or higher for the same looking thine – except here it is Euro. Too damned expensive! $100 Australian for a polo shirt? Bugger that. I haven't found any Lowes- or Payless- equivalent shops anywhere, and I have gone out of my way looking for them.

After getting back I settled into my room as I always do, happy to be off my feet. I had a hot shower as I was freezing cold (from the train, not the day – walking is hot work), and then read a little before dozing off. I awoke too late and got up and went to look for the seemingly only internet place in town (Italians are just beginning to ackowledge that computers exist), which I found out earlier today was open until 21.00, and after a good half hour walking around lost in the rain stumbled across it again. It was closed. At 7.30. So I'll have to do my banking and email and looking for places to stay all from Venice tomorrow.

I wandered around some more looking for a compatible bancomat – about hald of them spit my card right out again. At about 8.00 I found that as it was raining, there was virtually nobody out and about, so most of the shops had shut and gone. This included restaraunts (that I can afford: I'm not paying €40.00 for a plate of pasta) and cafe and bars – basically anywhere you can buy a bottle of water. Places were closing as I entered their streets, and deserted by the time I walked by.

I hate the Italian “plan” for road design in towns. Basically you have a 10 metre strip of uneven cobble or tar, then an adjustment – an uneven corner of a building in the way, or a badly placed doorway or something. You have to bend the road around it. The net effect is that no road is straight for more than about 100 metres. After that distance you can't see past the bends. Cross streets sometimes kink to such as degree that traffic backs up. Also, people obviously have no problem just stopping in a street (in their car), wedged sideways so much that it blocks pedestrian access, and just read the paper, while wifey or hubby are in doing the shopping or whatever. I can see why every driver uses their horn at least once per block. It's just so stupid. Ferrara is based on a pentagon, so every street corner is not a right angle. The blocks are mostly triangular, which makes the place impossible to navigate. Also many streets simply end at a wall, and others have circular one way systems which seem to require you to go down at least one of them the wrong way. All in all, the person or committee that designed roads in Italy in general was on some pretty serious hallucinogens at the time. So glad I didn't do the car hire thing.

After Venice I'm going to Cinque Terra for at least two days. I'm hoping it will be bustling with tourists who speak english. I think I'm the only tourist in this town – it certainly isn't tourist friendly, or even non-Italian friendly. I get a lot of black looks through the day, but then most people I've seen (except the tourists) are premanently grumpy. Makes you kind of sad when the locals won't even return a smile or ackowledge a thankyou, or even ackowledge you should you accidentally bump them in the street.

France looms. I have issues with France in that I neither speak French nor have a tourist guide book like Lonely Planet. I can'y buy one here because they don't have English language versions, so France still scares me a bit. But I want to get out of Italy. Soon.

2005-02-03T19:32:23