They Can't All Be Winners

We have been remiss in preparing blogs about our trip to Italy because our dear friend Debbie and her daughter Zoe have been visiting us in San Sebastian the last few days, but rest assured, we will have more posts about Italy as well as one about our friends' visit. But, just to fill the void, here is a short post about something we did in Italy that was a dud and a disappointment. Yes, we tend to write about the fun things we do, and how great they are, but for a little balance we present FICO Eataly World.

FICO Eataly World is a few minutes outside Bologna that was at least part of the reason for our decision to travel there. We were calling it the "Disneyland of Food" as soon as we learned about it, and a good write up in the NY Times increased our anticipation.

FICO Eataly World describes itself as the "largest agri food park" in the world. It has a ton of restaurants and stores serving and selling all things Italian food-wise, but it also has demonstrations of how many of the most famous products (parmagiano-reggiano cheese, parma ham, mortadella) are made. It also has classes on how to make pasta, olive oil, gelato, etc., etc. To us it sounded amazing.

Unfortunately, the reality did not live up to expectations. For a place that was clearly built with large crowds in mind (it opened last November), the parking lot looked like Wally World at the end of the movie Vacation, and the inside was eerily empty of customers in the busy summer season. The atmosphere was US enclosed mall without the people, and most of the people who worked there could be described as "surly" or bored, although we did have a wonderful time tasting and learning about balsamic vinegar from someone whose was clearly proud of the product she was showing/sampling.

To be honest, we thought we would spend two full days at FICO taking classes, sampling food, eating meals, etc. But, we ended up there for only about three hours and, while we did have a good lunch, we could get better food in Bologna in a better atmosphere. Fortunately, we found plenty of things to fill the unused time as Bologna turned out to be a really interesting city. (And if FICO wants to know how to improve the place, Shana has a long list of suggestions.)

While we highly recommend a trip to Bologna and the entire region, you can easily skip the bus ride (7 Euros each round trip) out to FICO.

Ciao,

Jeff and Shana