We have not been in Italy quite long enough to distinguish whether something that we find strange is just normal for the country, or whether the restaurant, hotel, or place is just strange on its own. So at the agritourismo when the lady brought me my requested coffee in a shot glass, I knew that was Italy. But when Dodie's requested "chocolate" came as chocolate pudding, literally, in a tea pot - we had to wonder. The rest of breakfast was some quite dry sweet cakes we had seen on the sideboard the night before. Now, even we know that the proper thing is a fresh, fluffy, useless chocolate croissant.
To help choke down my dry cake, I tried a ploy I had already figured out - order cappucino. That guarantees a larger volume of something drinkable, even if it is not all coffee. What came was another shot glass of coffee and a pitcher of hot milk. Hey, mixed with Dodie's pudding, that would be a hot chocolate!
Since Ferrara is a famous city, we decided to move ourselves a little closer, and have a good look at it. Our research had shown a Camping, about 3 km from town, so we went looking for that. A sign pointed toward the Camping, but after that, nothing. We have come to expect that in this land. When we had gone further than could be reasonable, we fired up the GPS. Yes, we had passed it. when we got back, it was easy to see the problem. The only sign did not face the direction that you would be coming from if you were following the first sign. Just one more inexplicable thing for us to note about Italy. The signage for the agriturismo had been flaky in exactly the same way.
At the municipal camping of Ferrara. Watch out, don't get "denounced"!
The camping itself was fine - even had paper in some of the toilets We set up our tent, stashed our gear, and went off to see Ferrara. Ferrara is a completely walled city, not that we knew that when we started out. When we first passed the wall, I decided that a photo would show nothing, and besides we had no info on what this bit of wall was all about. Ten seconds went by, and I was wondering why I had not had to defend my no photo right now decision. Whew, sure enough, Dodie piped up, "Did you get that wall?". At least there are some things in this world you can count on.
Part of the Ferrara wall. The wall was designed by Michelangelo
Ferrara is billed as a Renaissance city, and this had me expecting elegant marble everything, like in Verona and Venice. But what it turned out to be was very very rough stone (not even normal cobbles) streets, and brick buildings. They reminded me of old factory buildings in Montreal or Chicago. I feel I still had an open mind,and was just trying to get a handle on the place, but Dodie accused me of "not having a good time". She instantly loved the place, and what was my problem? (Dodie edit- Steve was mumbling about the buildings being plain, this was not like Venice, blah, blah.....so I pointed out to him that it sounded like he was not having a good time. For some reason he took offense to this.)
The streets of Ferrara are made of stones likes this, except where they are not well imbedded and roll about. This surface is better suited to a stream bottom!
Some of the elements that Dodie responded to immediately also grew on me as the day progressed. Despite the difficulty of riding small wheeled Bike Fridays on cobbled streets, this is a bicycle town. There is a much larger than usual car free zone, and lots of bikes around. Moreover, the bikes are being driven by ordinary people (no lycra!) and these are just gliding slowly around, doing errands or going for gelato. Kids are playing in the street, grannies are going for a walk. This is all in the dead centre of town. Cool!
Gramps and kids just hanging out downtown by the Cathedrale
As far as the sights that are in the town, beyond the walls the first major thing we came to were four palaces on a corner. One of these was built with diamond shaped blocks. It is called the Palazzo dei Diamanti and has 8000 of the stones. Dodie liked it a lot.
The main landmark in Ferrara is the 1385 Estense Castle, built to defend the Este seignory from public revolt. The castle has a great moat, filled with giant (man eating?) carp. Otherwise, it is built from the disputed red bricks. About the bricks - the guidebooks say that brick is a trademark of Ferrara, and that decorations made of terra cotta on buildings are a special feature of the city. Oh, and here I was thinking the bricks were just ugly.
The expected (hoped for) marble did materialize at the Cathedral, which was built in 1135 and embellished with the marble at the end of the 13th century. There is also a tower beside the cathedral with stripey marble. Now we're talking! The cathedral has a unique floor layout inside. With a quick peek, I did not detect the traditional cross design, but rather a large and open space. The church is dedicated to St George the Martyr (San Giorgio Martire) and has some of those great representations of sinners going to hell. No need for TV when you have these 13th century sculptors working for you!
Opposite the cathedral are some arcades, which historical panels nearby say have housed shops for hundreds of years. Now they house McDonald's. McDonalds is good at snapping up prime space like that. But the church is one up - they created the prime space from scratch.
Mcdonalds has grabbed a spot in the cathedrale square.
One of the main pedestrian streets of town radiates from the church/MacDonalds square and also happens to run through the former Jewish ghetto. The ghetto came about when a Duke D'Estre, in 1492, welcomed Jews who were fleeing the inquisition in Spain and Portugal. The street contains a synagogue (closed, now a museum)with two plaques memorializing members of the community slain in 1943.
This tower was actually leaning a lot more than it seems here. The leaning tower of Pisa, we have found, is just the famous one, Lots of towers lean, especially in Venice, but here too.
We also cycled the outside of the walls, about halfway around the city, before knocking off for gelato in front of the Cathedral. Three euros bought three scoops of really nice product. We sat with families and just everybody, watching everybody else slowly stroll around their town.
Tagliatele from our restaurant lunch. They brought this first, then the meat dish, and just a little later, the vegetables.
Back in the Cathedrale square, with the rest of the citizens. Everyone seemed so relaxed. Obviously the lack of cars and the rough road was a big factor, but people in this city seem happy in general.
The people here have a lot of pride in the beauty of the city. We know this because the Usual Questions were equalled by the "What do you think of Ferrara". Dodie's answer often included "We love it and we want to come back". The Ferraranese fairly purred at this.
Today's ride: 32 km (20 miles) Total: 2,037 km (1,265 miles)
