Fabius-Pompey European Excursions

Fabius-Pompey European Excursions Showing students the world! 🌍

Straight from the Hills of Emilia-Romagna 🏡Not every great meal happens in a restaurant.High in the hills above Bologna,...
04/06/2026

Straight from the Hills of Emilia-Romagna 🏡
Not every great meal happens in a restaurant.
High in the hills above Bologna, on a working farm in the Emilia-Romagna countryside, we sat down to a spread that needed no menu, no introduction, and no translation. Coppa — cured pork neck, aged and sliced thin, with that deep, complex richness that only comes from time and tradition. Ciccioli — a pressed cake of slow-rendered pork, studded with beans and spices, a rustic preparation that has fed farmers in this region for generations. And a board that told the entire story of Italian salumi culture in a single glance.
This is the kind of experience we try to build into travel — not just visiting a place, but sitting down at its table. When students share a meal with a family or a farm, something shifts. The history becomes personal. The culture becomes real.
That is what travel can do that no textbook ever will. 🌍
The table is the oldest classroom in the world.

Mortadella — Bologna’s Most Famous Export Americans call it bologna. Italians call it mortadella. And there is no compar...
04/06/2026

Mortadella — Bologna’s Most Famous Export
Americans call it bologna. Italians call it mortadella. And there is no comparison between the two.
True mortadella di Bologna has been made in this region since at least the 17th century — a Protected Geographic Indication product, meaning by law it can only be produced in Emilia-Romagna using a specific process. It is made from finely ground pork, seasoned with black pepper, myrtle berries, and sometimes pistachios, then slow-cooked in a large casing until it develops its signature pale pink color and impossibly silky texture.
Sliced paper-thin at a trattoria, it practically melts. Piled generously into a soft roll at Mortadella Lab in Bologna, it becomes something you’ll think about for years.
This is a food with a story, a geography, a legal definition, and a flavor entirely its own. Exactly the kind of lesson that sticks with a traveler long after they return home. 📚
The best souvenirs are the ones you eat.

The Holy Trinity of Bologna 🍝If you only eat three things in Bologna, let it be these.Tortellini in brodo. Small hand-fo...
04/05/2026

The Holy Trinity of Bologna 🍝
If you only eat three things in Bologna, let it be these.
Tortellini in brodo. Small hand-folded pasta rings, filled with a delicate mix of pork, prosciutto, and Parmigiano-Reggiano, served in a clear golden capon broth. Deceptively simple. Profoundly comforting. The official recipe has been registered with the Bologna Chamber of Commerce since 1974.
Lasagne alla Bolognese. Not the lasagne you might know. Here the pasta sheets are made with spinach — giving them their characteristic green color — layered with slow-cooked ragù and béchamel. Richer and more restrained than you’d expect.
Tagliatelle al ragù. The original Bolognese. Wide, egg-based noodles hand-rolled and cut, topped with a meat sauce that has simmered for hours. No spaghetti. No shortcuts. Just the real thing, the way it has been made here for centuries.
One of the most important things we give our student travelers is an education in authentic regional food — because when you understand what a place eats, you begin to understand who they are. 🌍
Eat the classics. Taste the culture.

Octopus, Calamari, and the Mediterranean Table 🐙One of the great pleasures of traveling through Italy is that the food t...
04/05/2026

Octopus, Calamari, and the Mediterranean Table 🐙
One of the great pleasures of traveling through Italy is that the food tells you exactly where you are. In Emilia-Romagna — landlocked, rich, and agricultural — the table is built around pasta, cured meats, and aged cheese. But venture toward the coast, or find the right restaurant, and the Adriatic makes its presence known.
Grilled calamari with polenta. Braised octopus over creamy puree with cherry tomatoes and olives. A charred octopus te****le plated with roasted tomatoes and fresh basil. These are dishes that speak the language of the Mediterranean — simple ingredients, treated with skill and respect.
As someone who seeks out octopus and calamari whenever they appear on a menu, I can tell you: Italy rarely disappoints. 🍋
And I have a feeling Greece in 2027 is going to take things to an entirely new level. The Aegean is waiting. 🇬🇷✈️
Great travel is measured in meals as much as miles.

Bologna’s Quadrilatero — Where the City Does Its Shopping 🐟🍊Tucked behind Piazza Maggiore is the Quadrilatero — a grid o...
04/05/2026

Bologna’s Quadrilatero — Where the City Does Its Shopping 🐟🍊
Tucked behind Piazza Maggiore is the Quadrilatero — a grid of narrow medieval streets that has functioned as Bologna’s open-air market for over a thousand years. The street names tell the story: Via Pescherie Vecchie. The Old Fish Market. Via Drapperie. The cloth merchants. These corridors of commerce have barely changed in layout since the Middle Ages.
Today, Ditta Bardelli — selling fruit and vegetables since 1863 — sits alongside fishmongers displaying the morning’s catch from the Adriatic: fresh octopus, squid, shrimp, sea bass, and more, all on ice by dawn.
This is exactly the kind of stop we build into student itineraries — not because it’s on a list of tourist attractions, but because it is where real life happens. A market is a living classroom. It tells you what a region eats, how people interact, what they value, and how they’ve organized daily life for centuries.
Walk through it once and you understand Bologna in a way no museum can fully capture. 🗺️
Want to understand a culture? Start at the market.

The Bologna Most Visitors Never Find 🔍Beneath the streets of Bologna runs a network of hidden canals — remnants of a med...
04/05/2026

The Bologna Most Visitors Never Find 🔍
Beneath the streets of Bologna runs a network of hidden canals — remnants of a medieval waterway system that once powered the mills, dye works, and silk factories that made the city one of the wealthiest in Europe.
Most of these canals were covered over in the 20th century. But if you know where to look, you can peer through a small window cut into the pavement on Via Piella and glimpse a canal that looks more like Venice than the landlocked city above it.
And then there is the Porta Castiglione — one of Bologna’s surviving medieval city gates, standing quietly at a modern intersection, largely unremarked upon by the traffic flowing past it. Built in the 13th century, it was once the threshold between the safety of the city and the uncertainty of the road beyond.
Hidden history is everywhere in Bologna. You just have to slow down enough to notice it.
That’s one of the greatest skills travel teaches. 🌍
The best discoveries are rarely on the map.

Faith, Stone, and Unfinished Ambition ⛪Bologna’s churches tell stories that go far beyond religion.The Basilica of San P...
04/04/2026

Faith, Stone, and Unfinished Ambition ⛪
Bologna’s churches tell stories that go far beyond religion.
The Basilica of San Petronio, facing Piazza Maggiore, was designed in 1390 to be the largest church in the world — larger even than St. Peter’s in Rome. The Pope intervened. Construction was halted. And so its facade remains famously, strikingly unfinished to this day: marble panels on the lower half, bare brick above. A monument to both extraordinary ambition and the limits of earthly power.
Step inside and the soaring Gothic interior takes your breath away — one of the longest naves in Italy, bathed in quiet light.
Nearby, the Basilica of San Francesco dates to the 13th century, its apse a rare example of French Gothic influence in an Italian city. Each of these buildings is a chapter in a history that stretches across centuries.
This is why we travel — to stand inside the stories, not just read about them. 📖
The most powerful lessons have no walls.

Bologna’s Porticoes — A UNESCO World Heritage Site You Walk Through Every Day 🏛️Bologna has approximately 40 kilometers ...
04/04/2026

Bologna’s Porticoes — A UNESCO World Heritage Site You Walk Through Every Day 🏛️
Bologna has approximately 40 kilometers of porticoes — covered arcaded walkways that line the streets of the historic center. In 2021, UNESCO recognized them as a World Heritage Site, calling them a unique example of urban architecture developed over nearly a thousand years.
They weren’t built for beauty. They were built for function — to shelter students flooding into the city for the world’s oldest university, to protect merchants and their goods, to allow Bolognese life to continue regardless of rain or sun.
What began as wooden overhangs in the Middle Ages evolved into the elegant brick and stone arches you see today. No two are exactly alike. Each neighborhood has its own style, height, and character.
This is what makes Bologna so endlessly walkable — and so endlessly surprising. Every archway leads somewhere worth discovering. 🗺️
Sometimes the path itself is the destination.

Piazza Maggiore — Bologna’s Living Room 🌅For over 700 years, Piazza Maggiore has been the beating heart of Bologna. Surr...
04/04/2026

Piazza Maggiore — Bologna’s Living Room 🌅
For over 700 years, Piazza Maggiore has been the beating heart of Bologna. Surrounded by the Palazzo d’Accursio, the Basilica of San Petronio, and the medieval Palazzo dei Notai, this square has witnessed coronations, markets, protests, and countless ordinary Tuesday afternoons.
At its edge stands the Fountain of Neptune, cast in bronze in 1566 by the Flemish sculptor Giambologna — a masterpiece of Renaissance artistry commissioned to celebrate papal power and the city’s water supply.
Today, locals still gather here at all hours. Students study on the steps. Families stroll in the evening light. It is a square that belongs to the people who live in it — and generously welcomes everyone who visits.
Standing here at golden hour is one of those travel experiences that simply cannot be replicated in a classroom. 📚
Great cities have great gathering places. This is one of the greatest.

Le Due Torri — Bologna’s Medieval Skyline 🗼In the 12th and 13th centuries, wealthy Bolognese families competed for power...
04/04/2026

Le Due Torri — Bologna’s Medieval Skyline 🗼
In the 12th and 13th centuries, wealthy Bolognese families competed for power and prestige in the most visible way imaginable — they built towers. At its peak, Bologna’s skyline was punctuated by nearly 180 of them.
Today, two survivors dominate the city center: the Asinelli, standing nearly 100 meters tall, and the shorter, dramatically leaning Garisenda. They aren’t just landmarks — they’re a lesson in medieval politics, engineering ambition, and the very human desire to be seen.
Walk the narrow streets of Bologna’s old city and these towers appear without warning, rising suddenly above the rooftops. It’s one of those moments that stops you mid-step.

Look up. History has a way of making itself known.

The Details of Dozza 🖼️The Biennale del Muro Dipinto has left over 60 years of layered artistic history on the walls of ...
04/03/2026

The Details of Dozza 🖼️
The Biennale del Muro Dipinto has left over 60 years of layered artistic history on the walls of Dozza. No two pieces are alike — ceramic relief, painted stone, fresco, mosaic. Every medium. Every era.

The ceramic harvest scene you see here was created in 1983 by Fernando Rava of Faenza — a nod to the region’s deep roots in winemaking and ceramics craft. Faenza itself is the city that gave the world the word “faience,” a style of glazed earthenware that spread across Europe centuries ago.
These aren’t decorations. They’re primary sources.
For a student of art, history, or culture, Dozza is a living curriculum.📚

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