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amberdreamsTravels in Italy with my mum and my hubby - not a match made in heaven! But we've survived thus far, and tomorrow I see them off to the airport in the hopes Paul won't be too impatient with my Mum's slowness and deafness!
Ravenna is beautiful, everything I'd hoped for and more, and Bologna has excellent gelaterias all over the place, which more than makes up for any other shortcomings.
I think in some ways we did these two places the wrong way round because Ravenna was so peaceful and pretty, while Bologna is much more the bustling, noisy Italian city. But for me it's kind of right, as Bologna is preparing me nicely for Rome.
We arrived in Bologna airport after a singularly civilised flight from Heathrow. We'd managed to get priority boarding without any fuss at all, due to Mum's age and us helping her with her luggage. She's perfectly capable of walking by herself and Paul carried her bag, so we were first on board and had plenty of time to stick our bags in the overhead lockers before the masses arrived. Clearly I should always travel with an OAP. We got the shuttle bus to Bologna Centrale station, used a ticket machine to buy our tickets to Ravenna and hopped on the next available train, which was nearly empty too. It was one of those tri-decker types so we sat upstairs to get the best views of the countryside. Paul was excited because one of the stops was Immola, so he had to stick his head out of the door there to take a photo of the sign.
The place we were staying in Ravenna was an apartment, owned by a nice Dutch lady called Manuela. It was really central, down a quiet side street rigHT opposite one of the main Romanesque churches, Sant Apollinare Nuovo. It was the back part of a town house, completely self contained and probably built in the early 1600s. We had two bathrooms, three bedrooms between us, and a roof terrace with a cast iron spiral staircase. It was lovely!
Our unassuming front door
We had our own little courtyard garden, and lizards that came out to play on our door mat.
The weather was 'interesting'. We had sunshine and wind and rain and thunderstorms, and the temperatures were nice for me and Paul but freezing according to my Mum - probably around 19ºC max. I was glad I'd brought a thin jacket, and did wonder whether I should have brought a rain jacket, but we managed without getting wet.
Ravenna is just full of buildings and mosaics all of the periods I'm most interested in, so I was in photography heaven. I've taken a ton of pics on Flickr so head over there if you are interested in such things. Otherwise, I'll put a few here and still bore y'all rigid LOL.
Basically, Ravenna's ancient buildings were mostly built by Theodoric, the Ostrogoth king who rther liked all things Roman and Christian. So there are churches, baptistries, palaces and mausoleums all dating around the late 400s to the early 500s AD. The mosaics are also mostly from this period. Which makes them extra awesome in my book.
Sant Apollinare Nuovo had this depiction of Theodoric's palace - love the curtains!
Me, the lumpy touristico at Theodoric's mausoleum (fascinating not least because that dome was carved from a single piece of stone and we have no idea how they lifted it into place.
My mum braving the bridge to the top chamber of the mausoleum
Paul with a new friend in the Ravenna City Museum - which we had completely to ourselves for the whole time we were wandering around. We also got locked in, and had to let ourselves out of the side door as there was nobody about when we came down to the exit. So we could have tucked a few nice Roman sculptures in our bags and walked off with them, nobody would have known!
The cheeky and unselfish sacrificial goat tugging at Abraham's coat to stop him slaughtering his son (another 6th C mosaic from the church of San Vitale)
My mum outside the mausoleum of Gallia Placida (her story is a good one, a rare powerful woman in ancient history)
Just to demonstrate Ravenna was built on marshes, several places were flooded - including the crypt of this church (I think it was San Francesco)
Where everything that can be mosaiced, will be mosaiced - a chair and a bike!
Spot the selfie... *grin*
Paul, Mum wandering off, and me....
Anyhow, I'll stop rambling, I'll have to do another picspam for Bologna, maybe after I get to Rome and the Hilton. I really need to caption all my photos on Flickr too, before I forget where they were!
Arrividerci, bitches!
Ravenna is beautiful, everything I'd hoped for and more, and Bologna has excellent gelaterias all over the place, which more than makes up for any other shortcomings.
I think in some ways we did these two places the wrong way round because Ravenna was so peaceful and pretty, while Bologna is much more the bustling, noisy Italian city. But for me it's kind of right, as Bologna is preparing me nicely for Rome.
We arrived in Bologna airport after a singularly civilised flight from Heathrow. We'd managed to get priority boarding without any fuss at all, due to Mum's age and us helping her with her luggage. She's perfectly capable of walking by herself and Paul carried her bag, so we were first on board and had plenty of time to stick our bags in the overhead lockers before the masses arrived. Clearly I should always travel with an OAP. We got the shuttle bus to Bologna Centrale station, used a ticket machine to buy our tickets to Ravenna and hopped on the next available train, which was nearly empty too. It was one of those tri-decker types so we sat upstairs to get the best views of the countryside. Paul was excited because one of the stops was Immola, so he had to stick his head out of the door there to take a photo of the sign.
The place we were staying in Ravenna was an apartment, owned by a nice Dutch lady called Manuela. It was really central, down a quiet side street rigHT opposite one of the main Romanesque churches, Sant Apollinare Nuovo. It was the back part of a town house, completely self contained and probably built in the early 1600s. We had two bathrooms, three bedrooms between us, and a roof terrace with a cast iron spiral staircase. It was lovely!
Our unassuming front door
We had our own little courtyard garden, and lizards that came out to play on our door mat.
The weather was 'interesting'. We had sunshine and wind and rain and thunderstorms, and the temperatures were nice for me and Paul but freezing according to my Mum - probably around 19ºC max. I was glad I'd brought a thin jacket, and did wonder whether I should have brought a rain jacket, but we managed without getting wet.
Ravenna is just full of buildings and mosaics all of the periods I'm most interested in, so I was in photography heaven. I've taken a ton of pics on Flickr so head over there if you are interested in such things. Otherwise, I'll put a few here and still bore y'all rigid LOL.
Basically, Ravenna's ancient buildings were mostly built by Theodoric, the Ostrogoth king who rther liked all things Roman and Christian. So there are churches, baptistries, palaces and mausoleums all dating around the late 400s to the early 500s AD. The mosaics are also mostly from this period. Which makes them extra awesome in my book.
Sant Apollinare Nuovo had this depiction of Theodoric's palace - love the curtains!
Me, the lumpy touristico at Theodoric's mausoleum (fascinating not least because that dome was carved from a single piece of stone and we have no idea how they lifted it into place.
My mum braving the bridge to the top chamber of the mausoleum
Paul with a new friend in the Ravenna City Museum - which we had completely to ourselves for the whole time we were wandering around. We also got locked in, and had to let ourselves out of the side door as there was nobody about when we came down to the exit. So we could have tucked a few nice Roman sculptures in our bags and walked off with them, nobody would have known!
The cheeky and unselfish sacrificial goat tugging at Abraham's coat to stop him slaughtering his son (another 6th C mosaic from the church of San Vitale)
My mum outside the mausoleum of Gallia Placida (her story is a good one, a rare powerful woman in ancient history)
Just to demonstrate Ravenna was built on marshes, several places were flooded - including the crypt of this church (I think it was San Francesco)
Where everything that can be mosaiced, will be mosaiced - a chair and a bike!
Spot the selfie... *grin*
Paul, Mum wandering off, and me....
Anyhow, I'll stop rambling, I'll have to do another picspam for Bologna, maybe after I get to Rome and the Hilton. I really need to caption all my photos on Flickr too, before I forget where they were!
Arrividerci, bitches!
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no subject
Date: 2016-05-18 12:54 pm (UTC)You all look like you're having a lovely time, and I may be a smidgy bit jealous ;) I would love to be able to trundle around Italy with my camera and not a care in the world! Speaking of, the shot of the two lizards is really good, I am so bloody bad at shots of moving creatures.
Safe continued travels hun and have fun at JiB. Catch a Belly Flash shot for me, would ya? :D
no subject
Date: 2016-05-18 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-19 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-18 04:39 pm (UTC)Do hubs and mums not get along, or is it the extra intimacy of traveling together?
On to JIB con!
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Date: 2016-05-18 05:55 pm (UTC)As for the family dynamics - Mum is pretty deaf (even with the hearing aids) and Paul tends to talk too fast and too quietly (I can't understand him half the time), so this makes for interesting interactions. Plus Mum is annoying him with her constant fussiness - none of the coffee she's had so far has been right, the weather's too cold, she's got this asthmatic permanent cough which is wearing to be around and now she's reached her eighties, she's slowed down terribly! It all adds up to one big irritation for him! LOL
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Date: 2016-05-18 04:58 pm (UTC)YAY for JIBCon coming up!
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Date: 2016-05-18 10:25 pm (UTC)See you soon! :D
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