Eat, Bike, Race

After resting and taking a short break in San Gimignano, we headed to Bologna which is supposed to be the gastronomical capital of Italy. We spent the day wandering around the city centre and visited the following

Basilica di San Petronio, which was undergoing a facelift for its façade, so we didn’t get a chance to admire its exterior which is supposed to be partially clad in red and white striped marble. Apparently this basilica was supposed to be larger than St Peters but Rome got wind of the scheme and cut off the funds, lol…

Torre degli Asinelli which is a leaning tower but not as famous as the one in Pisa. You can climb up the tower but I think we had enough climbing to last us for a while so we just admired it from the ground level.

Basilica di Santo Stefano, which is actually ‘an assemblage of four churches’. Since I just finished reading ‘The Historian’, I was actually a little creeped out by one of the churches (not sure which one), which was kind of spooky and reminded me of one particular chapter in the book. I won’t say which chapter so as not to give away any spoilers or to offend anybody.

We also did some window shopping and wandered past the oldest university in Europe. Dinner was at some really horrible place which I won’t even bother naming cos the food was so bad you have to taste it to believe it. It was seriously the first time that we had such bad food in Italy, and in the gastronomical capital of all places.!!! Disappointing to say the least.

The next day was far more exciting. We originally wanted to join a food tour but the price was a little too high for us, so we decided on a more exciting alternative, the Ducati Factory and Museum tour! Before that though, we managed to find a restaurant (Ristorante Garganelli at Savoia Hotel Bologna) for lunch and thank god the food was good. We were so happy we made reservations for dinner! It was that good! Some pics for you to drool over.

We basically did a ‘eat and run’ during lunch as we had to rush to make it in time for our Ducati tour so we were glad to go back for dinner. I was totally getting food envy during dinner cos everyone’s food looked so good! Too bad we only have that much space in our stomachs otherwise I would have loved to try everything on the menu.

My nice plate of seafood pasta...

Common dish in Bologna

- Tagliatelle al ragu

(Spaghetti Bolognese is not from Bologna!)

The Ducati Factory and Museum tour had to be pre-booked and we managed to get it at the last minute. They had a fixed time for the tours and we got the 3pm slot. I was the only girl in the tour, other than our guide. There was a Russian dude who flew in specially for the tour, talk about being a hardcore fan! We were probably the only two people on the tour who didn’t know much about bikes, cos when our guide was explaining certain things about the bike we were a bit lost (or maybe only I was lost and CS totally got it).

First up was the factory tour. We weren’t allowed any photos so no pics. The whole bike is made by hand and they apparently practise the kaizen method. It was quite interesting to see how the various parts come together. The whole company only has 1000 staff of which if I remember correctly, about 600 of them work on the factory floor and they make Ducati bikes for the whole world! That probably explains why their bikes are expensive. Next time I see a Ducati bike, I’ll remember all those Italian dudes on the factory floor.

After that, we went to the museum where we got another guide. The museum mainly had the racing bikes and since we don’t watch the races, it was a bit lost on us. We learnt that Ducati started out making typewriters and cameras. It was only after the war they made motorized-bikes out of necessity. The museum was like a shrine to all the various racing bikes, while I may not know much about them, they were certainly nice to look at.

Notice the tennis ball just above the handle?

Apparently, racers used the ball to hold a wet sponge to wipe their visors.

Range of Ducati bikes from the different years

Back at the same place for dinner, the Bologna football team came in for dinner, we guessed that they were probably having practice somewhere nearby cos the soccer players just wore their team sweatshirts and looked totally unglam, haha…

Beef Carpaccio with mushrooms

Pistachios crusted steak with balsamic sauce

After the exciting day of good food and interesting bikes, we went to the …. Ferrari museum! The factory tour is only available to Ferrari owners so the chances of us getting in is totally zilch. The museum was interesting enough and of course since you are there, there are many touts outside the museum asking if you would like to drive a Ferrari, haha… We got approached twice but we didn’t take up the offer, CS thought it wouldn’t be very fun to just drive it for 10 minutes in the town, he would rather drive it around the race track which was very costly. The museum was rather interesting and they also had a model of the factory and the various aesthetics and building design they took into consideration when building the factory to ensure that employees have their needs taken care of as well as minimal impact to the environment. The factory looked rather high tech, too bad we were not eligible to go in.

All the Ferrari F1 scale models ever raced

So that was our mini Eat, Bike, Race journey. Onward to strut like a supermodel.