# Campari & Soda: 0, # Gelati: 1
Finally had a pleasant day. It was warm and sunny with a very civilized top of 23C. During our coffee break I snuck off to a different bar to the usual one with two classmates, Jackie & Suzanne. The bar we went to has outside tables and table service. We went upmarket. Instead of coffee only costing 1,20€ we paid closer to 3€ but it was worth it. Living the high life.
In class today we finally abandoned studying the congiutive but have moved onto a review of prepositions, which are worse. Those are all those little words like: in, to, from, by and such like. We've been warned that there is no logic to the rules, you just have to memorise them. This was more of a warning to Ken, who gets very cross when things aren't logical. In Italian, when you say you are going to a place you use "a" for places such as a shop or a city, but "in" for regions or countries. No reason why, you just do. I'm not sure if Ken is going to be able to cope.
After class I had to go to a WindTre mobile phone shop front. I have a SIM card from them which was a special deal for tourists. I have 70GB of data, unlimited local calls and 300 minutes of international calls a month. However, you can't recharge your account with a non-Italian credit card from their app or their website. I'm not sure they've thought this through.
For lunch I went to the Osteria delle Donzelle. It is down a side street and had a few tables outside in what, frankly, looked like the parking lot behind the surrounding buildings. I thought they would have more tables inside but was only partially correct. It turns out the main restaurant is actually downstairs in the cellars of one of the buildings. They've also crammed a couple of tables on the landing at the top of the stairs, as well as a good 20 or more downstairs in various rooms in the cellar. I felt for the poor waitress. Never mind having that many tables to manage, but also the stairs!
The waitress was the first person I've met here in Bologna that didn't (or wouldn't) speak any English. We managed to comunicate but she was not very efficient or perhaps just frazzled by the workload (and the stairs!). I had an entree of a plate of salamis and various cheese. (They have a cheese here, which is on all the cheese platters, squacquerone, which is like cottage cheese only with less flavour. I wish they didn't.) Anyway, she brought me my entree but no cutlery. Once that what sorted, she almost immediately brought me my pasta. I ate the pasta first, before it got cold, then my entree.
I had the lunch menu which included coffee but I skipped that. I've been having trouble sleeping. I sleep long enough but never feel fully rested except last Monday night. I had thought it might be all the wine I'm drinking but I've had a few alcohol-free days and they didn't help. However, last Monday I didn't have an after-lunch coffee. It has dawned on me that perhaps I'm drinking too much coffee or just perhaps I shouldn't drink coffee after midday. It is a good thing I have a PhD. Without all that education I might not have been able to reach such a profound conclusion.
After lunch I just ambled about some more as it was such a pleasant day to be out in the sun. There is a ridiculous amount of churches here. Huge ones, that look more like cathedrals that just the local parish church, although that is all they are. Some look as if they haven't been maintained for years and are falling down, but still have the hours when mass is said listed on their doors. Others just never got finished. This particular church was built in the 1450s but they clearly ran out of money and never bothered finishing the facade. They haven't even bothered to finish it all around the doorway in the last 500 odd years.
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