Cellars in Monte Conero area

Panorama from the cellars where we usually go on a typical Le Marche tour.

The town in the picture is Osimo, Town of Headless People, wonderful spot on a natural spring and an Ancient Roman water deposit.

The picture was taken in Offagna.

Added pictures of past tours with me

As you may have noticed, I added some pictures of past tour experiences. They are saved on Flickr, and they will be added to my website as well.

Meanwhile, I want to inform you what I'm doing in this blog, at the moment: you already saw the twitter interface and the pictures. The next addition will be the calendar (which is already present in the website) and, soon, the special offers for tours.

The three faces of Bologna: Red (la Rossa), Fat (La Grassa), Educated (la Dotta)

Bologna is undoubtedly the strategical node of Italy. Everywhere you go, from North to South and vice-versa, you have to pass through Bologna.

Here are some examples:

• South of Bologna: Florence, Tuscany, Rome, Naples, Sicily, beautiful sea & islands.

• North of Bologna: Milan, Venice, Turin, Parma, Genova, Cinque Terre, Verona, Padua, Mantua, Ravenna, Alps.

With rare exceptions, from South of Bologna to North of it, you stop in Bologna.

Over the centuries, this meant that Bologna was a crossroads of different populations, different cultures, customs and traditions, dialects and languages. This is reflected in the richness of the cuisine, in the creation of the University, in the field of art, architecture and sculpture.

Therefore, Bologna is a mix of all these features, so that it is called the town with different and complementary faces: the Red (Rossa), from the colours of the buildings and from the prevalence of the Communist Party; the Fat (Grassa) because of the rich and abundant cuisine, linked with a high level of life quality; and the Educated (Dotta), because of the University, the oldest in Europe, which dates back to 1089 AD.

There should be written many many words to describe this aspect of the town. However, surfing on the web, I found somebody who did it much better than I: Jessica's posts are definitely worth a reading. There are 3 posts about Bologna: La Grassa, La Dotta and La Rossa.

Enjoy!