Impressions of Bologna

March 23, 2009
4:15pm, Outside Shop Across Bologna Central Station

The city seemed slummy at first. We stopped to take a picture by a fountain in Parco della Montagnola, which is a popular hangout for hobos.

We pushed onward toward the heart of the city, past a McDonald's, and emerged beside a statue of Neptune facing an enormous church, Basilica di San Petronio. Even though Brent's plan was to pass through the square so that we could see a church outside the main cluster of tourist traps, he still insisted on stopping to take photographs and continued to berate me for not capturing every buidling form al four sides, with and without flash.

As for me, I learned a long time ago that not even a fractionof the beauty of a scene can be capture by my novice hand and more importantly that pictures without people are boring. Just like the earth before people...boring. Maybe we'd like to imagine that the animals are all dynamically predating on each other and before that, when dinsaurs roamed the earth, that flocks of them covered the countryside, but the reality of it is animals usually keep to themselves and the beatific scene of deer chasing butterflies and squirrels cahttering at badgers is limited to Disney magic moments in Snow White.