Modena, Italy

After arriving and exploring Bologna, Italy. We set our sights on a day trip out to Modena, Italy

Modena

Modena was one of the places that was prominent on my list for a few reasons. It was the birthplace of Enzo Ferrari (the founder of the car maker Ferrari), but is also the headquarters for multiple Italian sports car companies including Pagani and Maserati. It’s also a small university town and was very nearby to Bologna where we were staying. So we were naturally interested in visiting.

It was a short 20 minute train ride from Bologna to Modena. We hopped on a morning train, and upon arrival started walking through the streets really enjoying the “small Italian town” feel and the bright sunny day.

Philosophy Festival

The streets were relatively quiet and we enjoyed the relaxing exploratory walk until we neared the town centre. We could hear commotion and were curious about what the fuss was about. Unbeknownst to us there as a Philosophy festival going on and there were a lot of people here for the festivities.

There were a lot of small break out tents for smaller sessions all over, but the main square was where their main events were going on. It was actually quite neat to see such a cool event happening. It was a very pleasant coincidence.

Albinelli

One of the places we did intend to stop at though was a market called Albinelli. We had read that it was a market that had been around in Modena for a very long time. The main attraction for us was that it was a place that had A LOT of food and obviously that piqued our interest!  We weren’t disappointed! In fact, after the amazing dinner at Da Nello the night before and seeing the abundance of ingredients and food ideas in Albinelli, we decided to eat in at our apartment tonight.

So we went about shopping in hopes of cooking our own Italian meal (as best we could!) Along the way we picked up the most amazing pork sandwiches I’ve ever had. It was a full roasted pig and the chef simply shaved off meat and threw it in a bun. How much simpler could you get? The results were scrumptious!

Dinner In

With the majority of the day spent eating and exploring, we returned to our apartment in the late afternoon with groceries in hand. After dropping things off we went out to a nearby supermarket and picked up the remaining items for dinner. We then proceeded to cook up our own versions of Linguine Vongole, prosciutto wrapped cantaloupe, prawns and stir fried veggies. It was fun to stay in, take a break from travelling and spend an evening together as a family. We had a great meal and ended up playing cards together into the night! (Sorry for the blurry photos! We were too eager to start eating I guess!)

I mentioned Ferrari at the beginning of the post, but didn’t really elaborate on it because tomorrow we’d be visiting the Ferrari headquarters and museum! I’d been a Ferrari F1 fan for a quite some time and you can bet that I was extra excited for tomorrow!