FERRARA WITH FRIEND

Last week I met two very nice Australian women, and one of them joined me for an afternoon trip to Ferrara.  Maggie is from Sydney and is an attorney with the very interesting job of defending university students.  She handles a wide variety of cases from traffic violations to criminal charges and enjoys her job so much that she doesn't want to retire.  I don't meet many people who are that enthusiastic about continuing to work!

Ferrara, population 132,000, is only 50 kilometers northeast of Bologna, so it was a short trip by train, only 30 minutes, and a short walk of 15 minutes into town.  It was around 3 p.m. when we entered the city center, and the restaurants and trattorias were closed for lunch, so we had a really bad microwaved lunch at a small cafe.

Because Maggie was leaving the next day and needed to go back early to finish packing, we didn't do a lot of sightseeing.  We did spend some time browsing around Castello Estense, a 14th century medieval castle in the center of the city.

Complete with moat....

And drawbridge...(introducing Maggie)

And internal courtyard.

There is also a very beautiful 14th century cathedral in the main piazza of Ferrara, Basilica Cathedrale di San Giorgio.

  

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so I borrowed these photos from the Internet.

After treating ourselves to a delicious gelato, we headed back to the train station and Bologna.

Short trip, short blog!