Bologna Italy

Greetings from Bologna.  We arrived at the hotel last night about 1700ish.  We were just exhausted.  Delta is not afraid to cram as many rows of seats as possible into coach.  I'm not that tall and my knees were up against the back of the seat in front of me.  The guy behind me wanted to put his foot on my arm rest.  I decided it was my space and pushed the foot off.  We didn't get much sleep.  It was an old 767ER with the movie screens on the ceilings.  The movie playing while we were trying to sleep had mass explosions and the light was penetrating my eyelids.  I ended up hanging my blanket from my glasses - very attractive.  Anyway, we've about decided that our advancing years are taking a toll on our ability to stay up all night.  We slept 11 hours last night, and I napped a fair amount this afternoon.  I am glad we decided to put a rest break in our path to Riccioni, if I'd had to take a train last night I think I would have perished.
We chose this hotel because it's close to the train station, as in right across the street.  There are old wooden shutters still on the building.  Between the shutters, the surprisingly good sound deadening windows and the air conditioner, we slept well.  There was virtually no street noise.  This is the view from our bedroom window at the train station.  People here use mass transit.

 

This is one of the night stands next to the bed.  It's an ancient Phillips console radio, made in Italy.  It's odd to see real wood furniture in a Mercure.  Most of them have remodeled and are now prefab laminate.

 

The beds, which are firm.  Another pillow would be nice, but one can't have it all.  Look to the right by the curtain, that's a pants press.

 

We did make one foray out today, to the grocery store.  I do love a grocery store in another country.  It's very interesting. Ham is very popular in Italy.

 

We're remembering that many trips start with one REALLY BAD DAY, like the Germany trip when, if possible, I would have turned around and gone home.  But we didn't and it got much better.  Fatigue makes everything difficult, so we are going to have an early dinner, go to bed and buck up!  Tomorrow we will brave the automated ticket machine in the train station and make our way to Riccione.  The cool thing is that it will talk to us in English.