Bologna, Italy

My friend Suzy and I could talk about food for hours on end, and we decided that we would be each other’s perfect companions on a trip to Italy, since we both really enjoy food & wine. After a lot of searching we settled on Bologna as the so-called foodie capital of Italy.

Some of the photos in this post were taken by Suzy :)

Day 1

We took a Ryanair flight from Eindhoven to Bologna and arrived in the early evening. After a chaotic start trying to figure out the poorly marked buses outside the train station, we made it to our hotel. We picked a small boutique hotel a bit outside the city center to make it more affordable called Le Stanze dei Fiori. We had the cutest room with a balcony overlooking a garden. It was a perfect spot!

Il Gusto Del Tempo

This restaurant was cozy and nice for a first stop after flying. Neither of us felt like it was mind blowing but the food was tasty & relatively cheap and we enjoyed it. We shared some bruschetta and I had some tortellini with bolognese.

Day 2

Toffee Art Cafe

Our first day was a totally open day to explore the city. We started out at Toffee Art Cafe which was close to our hotel. We mostly picked them because they had oat milk but it turned out to be a great spot to start every morning. I was very happy to get my hands on a pistachio cornetto as well.

Tigellino

Our breakfast pastries weren’t very filling and we were here to eat, so after some exploration we quickly found ourselves at our next stop. There were 2 places next door to each other that we wanted to eat, starting with Tigellino. These were small sandwiches about the size of an english muffin with a lot of different toppings. We shared 2 and both were fantastic.

Murtadela

Next door to Tigellino was Murtadela, a small sandwich shop specializing in mortadella. This is a specialty in Bologna so of course we had to try it. It was definitely the best mortadella I’ve ever had. The sandwich had burrata and pistachio as well, and I got a cute little aperol spritz in a paper cup.

After lunch we spent a lot of time wandering the city, looking at the architecture and checking out anything we came across that seemed fun.

Finestrella di Via Piella

One of the things we were looking for in our explorations was this famous window onto the canals of Bologna, meant to look like a little Venice (most of Bologna’s canals are covered up now). Once we finally found it we had to laugh, as it was all dried up and looked pretty gross. If you take a photo from the right angle though, it looks nice!

La Prosciutteria Bologna

We stumbled onto this cute little meat & cheese spot with outdoor tables and decided to try it out. We ended up with this huge charcuterie board. It wasn’t mind blowing (we later found out that it wasn’t as local as we thought) but was still a fun little spot to snack and people watch.

Le Moline - Osteria Bistrot

For dinner we ended up at Le Moline, where we got “candy shaped pasta” and green lasagna (a Bolognese specialty). Both were really good but the candy shaped pasta was absolutely the star of the show.

We finished with some cake and of course some tiramisu!

Day 3

Day 3 was a food tour with Delicious Bologna which was really excellent.

We started out with some lambrusco and a selection of meats - proscuitto di parma and mortadella are both from this region, and we tried some other variations of cold cuts as well.

Next we tried some wines in a beautiful natural wine bar.

From there we tried some pasta - tortellini in brodo, green lasagna and bolognese.

For our last savory stop, we tried a tigelle with pesto modenese, which is made of lard, garlic and rosemary. It sounds slightly unappetizing but it was actually pretty tasty (though it was extremely rich).

Lastly, we finished up with some delicious gelato.

It was a lovely evening of wine and food! I would definitely recommend this tour.

Day 4

Prendiparte Sky Experience

Bologna used to have over 100 towers throughout the city, built as status symbols for rich families. There’s only a couple left and we found that there was one we could climb to the top of for the view. We got tickets for the Prendiparte Sky Experience and climbed to the top for a beautiful view.

I Panini di Mirò

On our walk from our hotel into the city we kept walking through this area of what looked like a collection of food carts. We decided to stop for lunch and grabbed some sandwiches from I Panini di Miró. They were excellent and we had a lovely spot in the sun to eat them.

We were getting tired at this point so we took a nice little break on our hotel balcony with a beautiful garden view.

We ended up wandering for a while in the afternoon and found the cutest little dive bar with tables in front of a beautiful church. We hung out for a while to people watch and play cards.

Va Mo Là

While on our food tour the day before we had seen this restaurant that looked so cute inside, almost like it was partly a library. We decided to go there for dinner and it was so good. We also discovered a wine on the food tour that we loved, pignoletto - so we obviously had to get a bottle to share!

We finished off the evening with some delicious gelato.

Day 5

Verona

On day 5 we took a trip to Verona. It was incredibly beautiful!

When you get off the train you walk through a plaza of restaurants and stuff and an arena that looks a lot like the Roman Coloseum (just smaller).

When you get past that you end up in a maze of beautiful narrow streets. We were so in awe of how beautiful it was!

Gemma Pizzeria - Verona Centro

Most importantly though, we were hungry when we arrived. We headed straight to Gemma Pizzeria. They had a terrace with a really beautiful view of the streets behind it. We picked two pizzas to share and both of them were incredible.

After lunch we wandered around to explore this beautiful city.

The weather wasn’t great and we kept getting rain showers, but we both really loved Verona and would absolutely love to go back.

Day 6

On our last day we took a day trip to visit nearby Modena and Parma.

Modena

Modena is the city where balasamic vinegar comes from (check the bottle next time! It’ll say Aceto Balsamico di Modena).

After our train ride we stopped for a quick coffee while we figured out where to eat lunch.

Locanda Redecocca

We ended up at the cutest little restaurant which turned out to be our favorite meal of the trip.

We started out with gnocco fritto, which are fried pieces of dough that were topped with proscuitto.

We also got some lovely red wine and 2 pastas to share.

We were so happy with our meal that we asked if they had tiramisu - they didn’t, but they specially made some for us!

Modena was a pretty small town and not the most exciting, but I’ll always remember that amazing meal! (We did, of course, also buy some balsamic vinegar here).

Parma

From here we continued on to Parma, the home of both parmigianno regianno (also known as parmesan cheese) and prosciutto di parma.

We wandered around a bit but there wasn’t much we wanted to see. We wanted to get some parmesan and proscuitto but nothing opened until late and we were tired. We ended up at a spot that was a little touristy, but it was an alright spot to sit and rest for a while.

Berberè - Petroni

On the way home we were still a little hungry so we stopped at a pizza place that was on the way back to our hotel for a small bite. We got some small fried pizzas and they were delicious!

Day 7

We flew back in the afternoon on day 7 - we spent the morning wandering around and drinking our last pignoletto.

I would go back to Bologna in a heart beat. We ate some amazing food there, and I will spend the rest of my life looking for pignoletto!!