I was checking out the offerings served up this morning on my Zite Personalized Magazine app for the iPad and found this lovely article about Bologna, Italy in the New York Times. It had me pushing aside a few years worth of mental clutter to uncover the Wayback Machine. In I hopped and soon I was transported back a few years and several centuries, ambling along covered walkways, making my way to Piazza Maggiore, where I sat, sipping wine in the spreading shade of a springtime afternoon. There are photos, somewhere, in a box that is in storage at the moment. But I don't need photos to recall the feeling of time slowed, even in the ebb and flow of strolling pedestrians on a major shopping avenue. And somewhere nearby, a church where a companion and I lit candles and sent good thoughts into the universe. The richness of flavors tasted for the first time in a little restaurant - known to some Italian friends, where we ate what the proprietor had prepared - are still on my tongue, though the name of the restaurant is not.
Interesting that these memories of centuries old Bologna were brought to life again by a very modern device. Bologna is one of the many places I experienced while traveling on business, to which I'd like to return with a very different agenda, or no agenda at all.
