Day 3: Bologna

Our third day involved a move from Florence to Bologna before heading home. Fortunately we had become familiar enough with Florence following our exertions yesterday that we knew the journey from our apartment to Santa Maria Novella very well and so weren't in a rush. And so we had a 15-minute stroll to the train station, bought our tickets from the machine, and began our journey to the hometown of spaghetti bolognese.

The centre of Bologna is very easy to find from the train station; it's just a case of walking down the main street, Via dell'Indipendenza, which is itself easy to spot because of the huge gate at the top. And so we walked either down or alongside this beautiful road, seeing statues of our old friend Garibaldi and a tribute to the revolution of 1848:

The fountain of Neptune confirmed we were a few steps away from the main square, Piazza Maggiore:

Piazza Maggiore contains some wonderful buildings, such as the crenellated Palazzo Communale:

The Basilica di San Petronio is a lovely pink colour:

It might not be quite on the main square, but there's one particular building which stands head and shoulders above the others:

And so we headed towards it, whereupon we noticed the dome of the Santuario di Santa Maria della Vita poking out between it and its twin:

Clare and Helen decided they might quite like to get to the top of this tower!

It took a while to reach the summit, but they were rewarded with quite the view:

Apparently heading downhill was a lot harder than the climb to the top:

One lovely lunch later, and we set about seeing Bologna on foot before having to get to the airport. There were, of course, some beautiful porticos:

Some of which had the most exquisite artwork:

And it was difficult to turn without seeing beautiful buildings:

And soon we were on our way home after packing in visits to three famous Italian cities in three days.