The title of this post refers to our stay in Ravenna, not to me. (It’s hard to make a joke on a blog, I think.)

So…we had breakfast and got onto the A14 autostrada towards Bologna.  Dozza was only a 45 minute drive, and I had always wanted to go since seeing Colleen K.’s photos a few years ago.  The town of Dozza is tiny and easy to navigate.  They have incredible art on the walls of the town which makes the stroll very entertaining.  At one end of the basically two street center is a brick castle.  I took a bunch of pictures but the light wasn’t great and, well, they’re just to give you an idea.

We drove a bit more than an hour from there to Reggio Emilia, our home for the next week.  We were able to park the car about a block from our new apartment and meet Licia, the owner and get all checked in and put our clothes in the washing machine. Then we had to fill the car with gas and return it to Europcar.  Getting gas in Italy is our nemesis but on the third station we accomplished our goal and the tank was full.  From the Europcar shop we took a taxi back into town to the COOP supermarket and got the basic supplies for the apartment, then walked the less than 10 minutes back.

A discovery in the supermarket:  I saw a bunch of refrigerated products in the case with large 50% off/sconto stickers on them.  Just then a woman came up to open the door and look through them so I asked her about them.  She showed me that they were all out of date like yesterday or today for expiration but she said she buys them all the time and they’re fine.  So, of course, I bought us some Rana tortellini for dinner.  I don’t know if it’s because they were old or we’re already spoiled by excellent food but they seemed to have no taste.  But!  I saved at least €3 by getting them. (not worth it!)

After getting the groceries and our suitcases unpacked we took a preliminary walk around our part of town.  Reggio Emilia is decidedly not spiffed up for tourists.

Piazza??? We really need to learn these things.

I hate to used the word but it seems to be a more “authentic” place.  We heard no English in the streets and there don’t really seem to be any tourists.  I’m happy with it.  It’s a good place to shop and cook, a good place to practice my Italian, good train connections around the area; just what I wanted.   The apartment is very nice but on a busy street (noisy) so that’s not ideal but we’ll be fine here.

Dinner in the apartment and we’ve started watching season 2 of Stranger Things.  Best thing about dinner was the bottle of Morellino Scansano, an easy drinking red wine that Johnny and Pamela turned us onto.