Italy Road Trip Part 1 - Finding the Olive Farm

We started our trip off by Brian picking up the SUV we rented and everyone met at our place. We loaded up the car and took off. Unfortunately we didn't get far. Driving in Zurich is super confusing and there are a lot of one way streets. So after making a circle once and only finding one way streets for awhile we were finally on the highway to Italy. The highway in Switzerland and Italy pretty much looks just like ours in the US except for these random sections along the sides that were set aside for pulling off to stop. They were very small areas to pull your car into and it did not give you enough room to get good momentum up to get onto the highway so we weren't sure what the point was until we finally saw someone pulled off. It was a guy taking a leak on the side of the road. Apparently it's completely normal for people to just stop off and use it for a bathroom.

This is what you see as you drive through Switzerland to Italy!

Another picture of Switzerland before we headed into Italy

Our first pit stop was for lunch in Bologna, Italy. After driving through the city for awhile, we finally found a parking spot near the town center. We walked around for awhile looking at the city and then finally sat down to lunch. The lunch place was great. We all got some type of pasta and they were amazing. Afterwards we headed back to the car and attempted to get out of the city.

Walking around Bologna taking pictures of the city

 The courtyard of a building in Bologna

 One of the piazza's in Bologna

 My Asparagus Lasagna..it was awesome!

 Adam got Spaghetti Bolognese which was really good too!

 The inside of our restaurant

 The meat hanging up in our restaurant

A few hours later we were in Castel Rigone looking for La Rogaia. We had to follow the instructions from the website because the GPS did not recognize the roads on top of the hill in town. We literally drove up a winding road on top of a hill. Eventually we found the road across from the modern abandon building " not joking that was the description", then proceded down a gravel road through the woods. Not a short road by any means. This road was going down a mountain and was also winding around. The trees surrounding the road were cut out just enough so the cars could go down it. So it seriously looked like a horror movie in process. It's also pitch black at this point so that helps. We get to La Rogaia and meet Annette and Wolfgang the owners. They settle us in and help us get firewood. They also mentioned that since tomorrow was Sunday we should go to the store and we have about an hour to get there. So we run off to the store and get as much as we need for the next few days. I'm sure the Italian store owners of this mom and pop store were curious as to how this group of American's found the city on the hill, but they were probably happier because we bought a ton of groceries. After our shopping excursion we settled in for the night with board games and a fire.