a l'Italia

I just got back from my first trip across the continent, this time to Cesena, Italy to do some training with a partner we have there for work. The flight was cheap and easy, since Ryanair (for now, at least) flies a direct flight from Dublin to the airport in Forli, which is about a 20 minute drive. Anyway, the work went very well, but that's beside the point.

The point is that I got to go to Italy for four days, and I got to see a bunch of really awesome things. First off, I stayed at a little hotel right in the center of Cesena, the Hotel Cappello.

Hotel Cappello.

Cesena is a very pretty little Italian city (around 100,000 people, according to my work host) about 25 minutes from the Adriatic coast in the Emilia-Romagna region. The sun was shining pretty much the whole trip--a welcome change after the standard Dublin weather--and the food was great, of course. We ate a fair bit of local seafood, and also they have a local dish from Romagna called "piadina", which is a type of bread somewhere between a tortilla and a pita. From what I could gather, the main attractions include a fairly imposing pentagonal fortress on the top of a big hill right in the center of town, and the Biblioteca Malatestiana, the first ever public library in Italy (opened somewhere around 1450).

The Rocca Malatestiana, Cesena's castle

The highlight of this round in Italy came on Saturday of the trip, though, when we caught the train from Cesena down to Florence, via Bologna. The train ride was fun and rather relaxing, and only took about two hours of travel through the beautiful Italian countryside.

The country surrounding Cesena, from the hill in the center of the city

Florence was packed with tourists, and for good reason. Being the seat of the Renaissance, the architecture and the art are amazing, especially the main sights such as the cathedral and the campanile...

The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Il Duomo) in Florence, with the Campanile di Giotto

...and the Piazza della Signoria, which houses (copies of) a bunch of the famous statues by the Ninja Turtles and their contemporaries, like Michelangelo's David, Donatello's Judith and Holofernes, and Ammanati's Fountain of Neptune.

The copy of David and Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus.

We also wandered past the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence's most famous art museum, but the line was absurd and our time limited, so we didn't go in.

All in all, I'd say the trip was a resounding success. Good food, good wine, good company (I even met the mayor of Cesena, for some reason), and a great location make for a good weekend. I also got to improve my Italian, which was immediately noticeable when I came home to Dublin and my Italian roommate had his parents visiting.

So, until the next trip, enjoy the pictures!