Where2Next

October 18, 2025 and Val and I are leaving the Italy part of our Europe 2025 trip. We’ve been traveling with various friends since we first arrived in Zurich, Switzerland on September 13. One friend came with us when we left Chicago, then the three of us met up with four other friends (from Texas) in Milan where we continued our travels to Cinque Terre, Tuscany, and Florence.

When our Chicago friend left, a friend from Texas met up with us in Florence. By the beginning of October three of the four from Texas returned home and there were just four of us traveling together exploring Florence, Bologna, and Venice.

So from September 15 – October 1 there were always seven of us in our group sharing Airbnbs, meals, and experiences. It was always a good group of people and I think we traveled well together. Something I think is rare. From October 1 – October 10 there were four of us still palling around together. Val and I stayed in Bologna alone for another week. It took a us a couple of days to get back into our traveling groove of just the two of us. It’s been an awesome experience and well worth the challenging travel planning.

We are now on a train from Milan to Paris; a 7 hour train trip that started with a one hour trip from Bologna to Milan where we had a panic event. While leisurely having lunch in Milan we realized our train to Paris leaves from another station which is a 30 minute walk. Our 2 hour wait between trains whittled down to 30 minutes – we arrived in time. I can’t say we didn’t have visions of missing that train. What a mess that would have been.

Goodbye Mortadella, Hello Saint-Felicien

We love the meats of Bologna with my favorite being mortadella. Mortadella is a large salume made of finely hashed or ground cured pork, which incorporates at least 15% small cubes of pork fat.

I was hot to trot to get a sandwich from Mo! Mortadella Lab and most specifically their mortadella with pistachio pesto, smoked provolone cheese, and crumbled taralli. We made the 23 minute trek to their shop on Thursday; this was our dinner for the train trip to Paris. We were anticipating this delicious sandwich for days. I was very disappointed to find out they got the order wrong and it was instead a Mortdella sandwich with stracciatella cream and smoked provolone cheese. Oh well, disappointed yes, but I knew it was going to be good and we still looked forward to eating it for dinner on the train. Now we’ve had a very taxing experience getting to our train and we’re hungry, it’s dinner time and we are ready to share our last authentic mortadella. I open the package and discover dried up pieces of bread and some scraps from last nights late night stop. Surely Val has the sandwich in his bag! Noooo. Incredulous, we both thought the other checked the refrigerator before we left the Airbnb. We are usually very thorough and double check each other. It just wasn’t meant to be; next time, something to look forward to for sure. However, now we have no dinner and are forced to buy chips from the bar car. But we are now looking forward to enjoying our new favorite cheese we discovered in France last year – a very creamy delicious and super inexpensive cheese called Saint-Felicien. It’s a cow’s milk cheese produced in the Rhone-Alps region of France; it is designated a dauphinois cheese. I designate it yummy! You can believe we will be buying some tomorrow. We would buy some tonight but won’t be arriving until late. Hoping no more surprises.