For the second year in a row, Sam and I were headed to Pescara, in Italy, to see my family. The previous year we had flown into Napoli for a weekend, and taken a bus to Sulmona. Once again we decided to go to the beaches of Pescara via a quick weekend break in a new city – Bologna.
As we so often do, we left the decision down to good flight times and logistics. With a 7:30pm flight into Bologna landing at 10:30pm, we could go straight from work, race to the hotel to drop our bags, and go out for a couple of quick drinks before waking up exactly where we wanted to be.
And who wouldn’t want to be in a city which is renowned for La Dotta, La Grassa, La Rossa? This directly translates to “The Learned, The Fat, The Red” – so education leading to culture, an epic selection of food, set in the red-roofed architecture for which the city is so famous. Done.
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Getting into Bologna for the weekend
Our flight was, sadly, delayed a full 90 minutes, which meant that our traditional race for a nightcap was a no-go this time around. And the very convenient 10-minute train which ran every 15 minutes stopped running at midnight. We got lucky with timings and caught a night bus to Bologna Centrale.
This was only a 15 minute walk from our hotel, La Suite Rooms & Apartments. Bologna was a surprisingly expensive place to stay for a weekend so we went for the cheapest passable option and were very happy with it.
La Suite Rooms & Apartments set us up for a perfect walkable base for our weekend in Bologna. The price was €110 per night, which we reduced by a good €30 per night thanks to a banging Quidco cashback deal. It was as central as could be and (this might be the most niche shout-out I’ll ever make) there was no key to carry around, it was all code entry. I’m not saying it makes or breaks a hotel, but how many times have you been to a hotel where you get handed a key chain the size of a baseball bat? Anyway…
Day 1 of a weekend in Bologna
We stopped for a coffee and cake at the famous Cafe Terzi before heading off to the local markets.
It started drizzling, but of all of the cities that we could be walking through drizzle at the weekend, Bologna was tough to beat. All of the sidewalks are lined with distinctive porticos.
Mercato Delle Erbe was a mix of both modern restaurants and fresh food stalls and it was a bit quiet.
We decided to come back later and grabbed another coffee from La Bottega Del Café which was right at the market entrance. After a walk around town to take in some of the architecture, we stopped for a gelato at Venchi and tried to find the other market in town.
The old market in Bologna’s Quadrilatero is a partially outdoor market down narrow streets in which all of the stores put tables out front. This became our new home for the next two days. We were obsessed.
Every store seemed to stock the best cured meats and cheeses you’ve ever seen.
One store had a vertical array of the same parmesan aged from 18 through to 100 months!
The cured meats were hanging from every square inch of the ceiling. The tortellini were painfully handcrafted into tiny little folds and piled into trays and sitting in windows. I could not imagine the human (woman) hours spent making the tortellini sitting in this market. And amongst it all you could pull up a chair and grab a bite and a glass.
The Oldest Bar in Bologna
We wanted to eat everything everywhere and all at once. It was overwhelming so we stopped at Osteria del Sole at the heart of this market for a drink while we composed ourselves. This was an excellent stop-off point, and, according to some, the oldest bar in the world. As a couple of pub-loving Londoners this did cock our brows, but we were confident that it was the oldest bar in Bologna.
We had a glass of Pignoletto, similar to Prosecco but made from a grape indigenous to the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. It was served in tiny little glasses that topped off the very unique experience. People sitting around us had brought in their own food from the market.
This seemed like a very good option, but with only two days to eat, we opted to go somewhere that both sold and cooked food rather than make our own bar picnic. Even still I would recommend this for anyone who visits Bologna for a weekend.
Lunch at a Butcher’s Shop
It was decided. Grilled meat at the butcher shop. There were six high stools outside the window of Macelleria Con Cucina Agnoletto Bignami looking in.
Along with a full butcher shop, they also had some pre-cooked sides which looked delicious. We got two plates of meat with pork, chicken, and beef and a 375ml bottle of wine to split. This was both our first and best value meal of the trip, coming in at £27.
The rain had stopped and the sun was out, so we went for a walk through the Piazza Maggiore to admire the buildings and the fountain of Neptune. We paid a premium on a couple of beers (€6 a pop) to get front-row seats to the piazza at Bar Vittorio Emanuele.
By 3pm we had done so much walking that we treated ourselves to an early aperitivo of Campari spritzes at Camera a Sud.
This was a standout bar on the trip for us. The drinks menu was on point and there were good vibes. In fact Good Vibes is the name of the group that operates the bar. Our aperitivos were served with a small bowl each of green olives, friselle, and chips.
It was time to decide which of our pre-researched restaurants we wanted to go to for dinner. Our first choice was booked so we made a lunch reservation for the next day. Our second choice was – gasp – closed for dinner and closed the next day.
Basta for Pasta
Given that it was only 4pm by this point and they were open until 4:30pm, we made a dash for last orders at Al Pappagallo.
The name alone was enough to love. Two patient staffers took our order of tortellini in brodo and tagliatelle in Bolognese sauce (yes, this is where Bolognese was born) with a couple of glasses of Lambrusco.
Every single item on this order was a local speciality: the tortellini were hand-made in-house and served in a capon brodo (broth).
The Bolognese was so simmered down that it barely had any tomato sauce, it was like tomato flavouring, over fresh tagliatelle. Lambrusco is another indigenous red grape to the Emilia Romania region and one which is traditionally made to be sparkling. It was all so unique and delicious. It cost about £40.
We strolled around the main streets of Bologna. The façades on the buildings and some of the porticos (arches over which the sidewalks run) had intricate paintings.
There are two very famous towers called Le Due Torri (The Twin Towers) built in 1885.
Similar to Pisa, one of them is very famous for leaning. Months after our visit, we learned that it was leaning dangerously so. It is now feared to be falling over! We stopped for a quick beer in a piazza overlooking Le Due Torri – hopefully not for the last time! – and then headed back for our afternoon siesta.
Aperitivos
For aperitivo 2.0 we went to Caffe Rubik. This was a love-at-first-sight kind of bar, the perfect mix of traditional old-school Italian and a trendy modern take on the offering. It gets busy and they won’t serve you while you wait for a table but it is worth the wait.
I had a taste of Lambrusco and wanted more. One block over we had a quick drink at Marsalino. Then we headed to Medulla Vini for a truly excellent selection of top wines by the glass.
The first dinner was wearing off at this point, but we didn’t want to have another complete meal. Bologna couldn’t have been a better place for this type of meal.
We headed back to Quadrilatero to get a plate at Salumeria Simoni, a deli that we spotted earlier that day that was full of diners inside and out. A plate of ultra-fresh, finely sliced meats was placed before us. Even though we weren’t hungry the whole plate disappeared.
One more nightcap and off to bed. We had a beer at Bebi. This was such a fun little bar with maybe 20 seats inside and out. They hadn’t bothered to paint over the chipboard, but this added to its vibe. The crowd was fun and hitting the spritzes.
Day 2 of a weekend in Bologna
The next morning, we opted to traverse town to get the best gelato in town for breakfast. En route was passed some less mainstream tourist attractions. One was La Finestrella di Via Piella. This directly translates to “The Little Window of PIella Street.” It was exactly as advertised: a very small window that you could poke your head into and look over the canal.
Another was Casa Isolani, which in itself is a building worth passing. It was constructed in the 13th century and the wooden framing looks a little wobbly. But underneath the classic portico cover, if you look up, you can see three arrows of unknown origin lodged into the ceiling. This was one of those ‘secret’ attractions. If you didn’t know to look for it, you would easily pass it.
Gelato Breakfast
Breakfast was gelato at Cremeria Santo Stefano.
Having run a gelato shop for a summer as a student, I am a true gelato snob. Italy’s base quality of gelato never disappoints (though I would quip that the gelato shop should open earlier than it does – what a perfect breakfast). Naturally, we always try to sniff out the best in the town. This gelato was excellent, served out of closed stainless steel pots which prevent the gelato from oxidising. You could look into the small area just behind the counter where it was made as well. They had all the classics as well as some more interesting flavours, all made with fresh local produce.
We had a quick espresso stop at Bar Maurizio (which had a very funny interior) before heading to Piazza Santo Stefano and Piazza della Mercanzia.
Both are full of old red buildings dating back to the 12th to 16th centuries. The sun was out, and we had a bottle of Menabrea in the Piazza Santo Stefano to soak up the view. It was worth the tourist premium.
Best lunch in Bologna
Lunch was at All’Osteria Bottega. It was slightly off the beaten track and looked so, so legit.
The servers didn’t speak English, and there was no English menu. A perfect opportunity for me to practice my Italian. A double-edged sword… my comprehension was not 100%. The server recommended a few dishes for us, including their house speciality to start. I understood it as ‘slices of peppercorn sausage.’ A single slice of sausage?! I ordered four. Four raw balls of sausage meat came out. Oops.
I was surprised by how easy it was to eat that much raw pork mince. For the rest of the meal, we went for the Bolognese classics. A thinly sliced cured meat platter. Tortellini in brood. Tagliatelle with Bolognese. Milanese veal cutlet. All served alongside a bottle of Lambrusco.
The bill came scrawled out on a piece of the same brown parchment paper that they used as a tablecloth. It was our most expensive meal at just over £100 but we ordered a lot and felt it was great value.
With only an afternoon and evening left and conscious of an early morning, we headed back to our favourite spots in town, namely, Quadrilatero. We had an espresso and Birra Forst in the window of Bar Ferri. It was a classic unpretentious Italian bar overlooking one of the streets of the market.
Nearby was Enoteca Storica Faccioli, a wine bar established in 1924 and specialising in natural wines. The wines we chose here were not our favourites, but the bar was cool.
We had one last pitstop at Birreria Popolare for a beer before dinner.
Dinner
For the last dinner of our weekend in Bologna (one which could/should have just been a single light plate of cured meats) we went to Grassili. The meal embarrassingly greatly resembled what we ate for lunch, albeit slightly less food.
After our nightcap at Ruggine, which was a very cool bar with outdoor seating sprawling down the side of a red brick building, we planned to go home. We had an early train the next morning to Pescara.
This plan got derailed when we walked past Cremeria La Vecchia Stalla and saw a mass of people lining out front. Obviously, we needed to get ANOTHER gelato after such a big day of food. Falling asleep that night couldn’t have been easier.
The end of a weekend in Bologna
Our morning plan was tight. We had an 8:20am train to Pescara, and wanted to pick up breakfast at Forno Brisa. Forno Brisa, a modern hipster-esque bakery, didn’t open until 8am. We started getting antsy at 8:05am when the shutter was still closed.
Nervously, we ordered two slices of pizza (“NO DON’T HEAT THEM UP!”), two coffees, and beelined for the train station. Turns out the train was late anyway.
Bologna is a stunning destination for a weekend, short or long. With only 48 hours we focused on its centre, but we would gladly return to venture past the downtown. It is a city steeped in history and well-maintained/restored. (Italy is generally excellent at doing this for its cities). The food is not only excellent but entirely unique to its region. This brief weekend has only made us more excited to explore more of Emilia Romagna.
