Italy Day 16, Ferrara: Escaping the Rain

Wednesday, October 9

Ferrara, Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna

Highlight: Escaping the rain

Lowlight: No internet connectivity

This morning in our beautiful apartment in Dorf Tirol, after yesterday's rain and disappointment, was the point in our vacation where our trip took a left turn. After the ceaseless overnight rain, it finally cleared up by 05:00 and I could see stars for the first time since we’ve been here. The stars gave me hope for good weather to come for the remainder of our stay in Dorf Tirol.

Golden Hour Photo of the Estense Castle in Ferrara

We took advantage of the largely clear skies to open the sliding door onto the deck for a bit of fresh air. In the early morning with the door to deck open, we heard quite the collection of sounds: church bells donging, roosters crowing, cow bells clanging, and random hawks screaming from the avian rehab center at Schloss Tirol. I started in on my morning ritual: wash last night's dinner dishes, make coffee. This moka pot coffee is getting old; we miss our American drip coffee. 

Coffee brewed, I brought the little cups to the sofa where Ann was sitting and I could read her body language. It was not good and I could see that she was on the verge of a breakdown. While the weather for today was to be sunny to partly cloudy, tomorrow would be a repeat of yesterday’s inch and a half of rain. We’ve already had three complete rainout days on this trip, yesterday and two days at Lake Garda, the lake we never really saw. We do not want a fourth. We were both dispirited and ready to go home. Rain sucks!

The prospect of tomorrow being another vacation day cooped up with Netflix was something we could not bear. So, what to do? Ann was thinking to relocate south when I actually voiced that we ought to find somewhere sunny to go. And so, we started looking further south with the idea to abandon the remaining nights on our reservation here in Dorf Tirol. It’s a lovely place and we'd be forfeiting a chunk of money by leaving, but we needed to maximize our experience in Italy, not watch Netflix.

Ann was contemplating just extending our stay in Firenze from two nights to four, but I suggested Ferrara. Ferrara is a city that I had on my initial itinerary for our Italy trip, but which got dropped for a longer stay in Südtirol, in hindsight, a mistake, but who can predict the weather? After one false start, we managed to book an apartment in downtown Ferrara for two nights. We let Franziska know that we'd be vacating and heading south for better weather. Sadly, she was at work and we would not get to say goodbye to her in person. She was a great host and we loved staying at her home.

In Ferrara, we couldn’t check in until 1600 so we hung out in our apartment in Dorf Tirol, snacked a little lunch, then hit the road about 1300 for the 3.5-hour drive, which ended up being 4 hours.

Saying Goodbye to the Shy and Quasi-Feral Local PT

As we descended the mountain from Dorf Tirol into Meran, we experienced another bout of spaghetti engineering, a place that totally confused both us and the GPS, a figure 8 entrance to the highway. WT ever loving F! As we drove south towards the Veneto alongisde the Adige River, we were astounded at the furious torrent that was over its banks in many locations. As we crossed and recrossed it on bridges, I could see massive whitecaps on top of standing waves. I could not imagine what the river looked like now in Verona! 

We followed the Adige all the way into Verona where we had already stayed two nights before. Then we struck due southeast towards Ferrara and the Adriatic. As we drove through the flat and highly agricultural province of Ferrara, we saw lots of magpies. The tails of these birds are both longer and a bit more rounded than ours back home. Scientists are divided about whether Eurasian Magpies (Pica pica) are a different species than our Black-billed Magpies (P. hudsonia). 

The apartment we rented was just off one of the main streets of Ferrara and we found the building with almost no problem. This is where the problems started. Some hosts are quite exacting and for self-check-in will send explicit photos of the building or entry, where the keys are located, and how to access them. This host was clearly not of this type.

While the building has the holy grail in Italy, a private parking lot, the lot is gated and requires a key fob for entry. There is no parking otherwise, so it requires leaving your car in the street while going inside to retrieve the fob. While I stayed with the car in the middle of the street, flashers on, shrugging at those trying to get around me with my best Italian insouciance, Ann was trying to decipher the anything-but-clear instructions from our host. It was a scavenger hunt for the building key, the room key, and the fob to open the parking gates. Can anything on this trip be simple?

Once inside the very spacious apartment, we ran into two other bummers. There was apparently a big storm that wiped out WiFi to the apartment, so even when we connected to the router, we couldn't get anywhere. We would also come to discover that our phones were no longer able to get high-speed data when connected to the cell network, but we had been insulated from this because of broadband WiFi at farnhaus in Dorf Tirol. I blame Verizon though I have yet to take it up with them.

Also inside our room, we would become acquainted with the official bird of Ferrara, the zanzara, the mosquito. The little f'ers were everywhere and we were soon covered in welts. I cannot count the number of the bastards that I killed. We would come to find out that they were significantly worse outside than inside.

Once we were settled and had discovered that there was no Internet, we had to do something. Without Internet in a strange town, you cannot even get a map to determine where you are and where you might want to go. Fortunately, while on WiFi in the morning in Dorf Tirol, I acquainted myself with the lay of the land in Ferrara.

I figured that we might find or steal some unsecured WiFi close to the heart of downtown from a library or hotel or perhaps we might get lucky and find some free tourist WiFi in the city center. So we started walking to the city center, cell phones in the air sniffing for networks. Ann was not complaining, but I could see from her gait, wincing, and slow pace that her knee, injured on our hike, was killing her.

With no luck as we walked, we headed for the Castello Estense praying for WiFi. Finally, as we stood across the street from the most famous site in Ferrara, the unsecured EmiliaRomagnaWiFi popped up, free WiFi for tourists. The signal quality was not great, but after being off the Internet all day, it was comforting, especially because I was hugely concerned about Hurricane Milton and its impact on all our friends on the west coast of Florida.

We spent time hanging by the moat around the castle catching up on our Internet needs and getting plagued by more mosquitos. As we surfed the Internet, we were passed several times by Italian military vehicles containing armed soldiers. These soldiers provide extra security in certain tourist areas, something that is pretty much illegal under the US Constitution and that we found unusual if not a bit disconcerting.

Ultimately, we made a lap around the castle and found out the light was fantastic between 18:15 and 18:45 so we will return tomorrow evening with my big camera to shoot at golden hour. While we were downtown, we decided to go back to the apartment and cook dinner. Being tired and without signal, it would be hard to identify and navigate to a decent restaurant. That would be a project for tomorrow and we would enjoy some great Ferrarese cuisine then.

First Glimpse of Castello Estense

Fountain in the Estense Moat

Cathedrale di San Giorgio

Piazza del Municipio, Scalone d'Onore

Cafe in the Piazza del Municipio

Sunset in Ferrara

Italian Army Guarding Tourist Sites in "Strade Secure"
Disconcerting for Americans

We went home slowly so as not to torment Ann's knee any more than necessary. Once there, I set about making dinner in the kitchen which was obviously brand new, there still being stickers on the stove and all the bottles (soap, olive oil, etc.) still with their security seals. Back in Dorf Tirol, I had laid in a bag of elicoidali from to me an unknown producer. However, I know good bronze die pasta when I see it and immediately put it in my basket.

As we were sitting at the dining room table eating a nice bowl of pasta, I found it terribly ironic to be eating boxed southern pasta in Emilia-Romagna, home of the sfoglia, sheets of translucent egg pasta. In Dorf Tirol at the tiny grocery, I also scored a bag of rucola (arugula) and a bag of valeriana (mâche) that I mixed and dressed with the extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar provided by our host. We found this true in each place we stayed: EVOO and balsamic are standard in every kitchen, much as they should be.

And in aside, why can we not run down to the grocery store in the States and score some mâche? I used to serve tons of it at the restaurant and have never, ever seen it in a grocery store in the US.

We hit the bed, mostly out of boredom from not being able to surf the net or to stream a movie.