Out with the “girlsâ€
Monday, May 19th, 2014
A couple of women (Abby and Helen) from Oakland who are friends of mine and my ex-wife came to Bologna last week to spend a week enjoying the city. I had bragged about it and they took my advice. I went with them to aperitivo for their first night in the city at Le Stanze which has a spectacular interior and a great aperitivo buffet. As often happens forgot to take any photos but I snagged one from the web. Â
Le Stanze
However the next day I met them at their very nice apartment that they had rented in the center of town and we went to lunch. For a special experience I suggested that we go to Osteria del Sole. I have written about this place once before and it is indeed a special place. How often can you have lunch at a place that has been in operation since 1465? Another thing that very special about this place is that it continues a very old tradition in which an osteria was not a place to eat but only a place to drink. So you cannot buy any food there and I’m not sure that they even have water or soft drinks. You can buy wine and beer but if you want to eat you need to bring your own food. So that’s what we did. We first went to another institution in Bologna, Tamburini, which is a wonderful place to buy all kinds of salumi, cheeses and prepared foods. We bought lasagna made with asparagus and mortadella, tortellini with ragu, a salad made of octopus and potatoes, some kind of desert made with figs and some olives. We had also stopped at a produce stand in the wonderful street Vecchie Pescherie where there is terrific produce as well as all kinds of other foods and bought a little basket of the fantastic strawberries that they have here. At Tamburini they heated those things that should be served hot or at least warm and we took them to the osteria and bought glasses of wine and had a great lunch.
Outside Tamburini
Inside Osteria del Sole (photo from web)
We then walked around in the center a bit including a stop at the Biblioteca Sala Borsa and did a little window shopping. They were awestruck by the beauty of the city and we almost lost Helen who was busy snapping pictures of everything. One stop was at perhaps a little known place inside what I think is called the Palazzo di Enzo. There if you stand in one corner and someone stands in the corner opposite you can talk to each other in a normal tone of voice. It’s some kind acoustic phenomenon that is very special. It’s kind of like kids talking into tin cans with a string attached between them. Kind of magical.
Abby talking to Helen in the opposing corner
That night I met them at their apartment and we took a bus that took us to the restaurant that I’d gone to with the crowd of Italians the previous Saturday for a great meal of seafood specialties accompanied with some nice white wine and followed with a glass of grappa. I was delighted to be a tour guide for them.
Dinner at Trattoria Il Tari’
