Modena

After our hectic 3-city blitz (Padua, Venice, Verona), we needed a week to catch up on work and sleep... So we stayed in a nice place in the suburbs of a town called Modena (a pretty nice hotel at a very cheap price because it is in the middle of NOWHERE). Rest and work, we did. This place was very different from the tourist and university towns, we got to see what Italian suburbs are like.

It was a quirky experience: Our hotel was a 40-minute bus ride away from Modena; the public transportation buses also serve as school buses, so we spent a lot of time hangin’ out with Italian kids. Also, the buses did not run much more often than the school schedule (and extremely limited on weekends), so we had only a couple of choices of times if we wanted to go anywhere.

The 3 restaurants on our street (walking distance) are on a decidedly “Italian” schedule: closed every day from 1:30pm until 6:30pm; closed on Sundays; closed on Mondays; Closed either Saturday lunch or Saturday dinner. One was actually Only open on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, closed the rest of the time. The market had similar hours (or lack thereof). Vince, the newly-graduated MBA, is still puzzling over the business model, to say the least. We ate at the same pizza place almost every day, since it was the cheapest and it was open the most often (relatively speaking). We did go hungry that Sunday (before we learned that we would need to stock up) – because everything walk-able was closed... And the buses weren’t running.

But, since it was a week primarily for resting and working, the quirkiness just made us laugh most of the time (except for that hungry Sunday. Not cute.)

Since we had extra time on our hands, Vince got a new pair of jeans to replace the ones with the growing hole that was threatening to get pretty indecent.


So, about Modena:
It’s primarily known for olive oil, balsamic vinegar & spumanti… and really expensive car manufacturing. It is called “Motor Valley” because it’s the home of Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, and Ducati. There were always Ferraris outside our hotel and on the streets – test-driving them is an expensive but popular thing to do. One day there was a Ferrari parade, and owners drove their Ferraris through our neighborhood (I think there was some kind of event in the neighboring town). It was wild to see one after another driving by - I counted 32.


We went into “town” (Modena) one day and saw all the sights. It’s a really pretty town…

Seems like every town in Italy has really old, impressive churches, with 16th-century paintings & sculptures all over the walls and huge ceiling frescoes:

Now what all of you (or maybe just Corey) have been waiting for….

The Ferrari museum. We wanted to tour an actual factory, but we couldn’t:
- Ferrari: you have to own one to get in
- Maserati: farther out of town, can’t get to it by bus
- Lamborghini: it’s closed for “factory renovations” (locals say that “renovations” in this case means that there’s some super-secret car being built and factory tours all are canceled until the car debuts next spring)
So we settled for the Ferrari museum – it’s a big museum, tons of Ferraris, racing uniforms, and some cool exhibits.

This is the inside of a 60's Formula car - amazing how close you could get them.

This is the new Formula 1 steering wheel – there was an exhibit of the steering wheels over the years - more buttons & gauges added to every one.

They had some of the old pencil-drawn plans of the cars/engines - the picture doesn't quite do it justice, but it was really cool.

This is the “Hall of Victory” – a few of the cars that have won Formula 1 races – Trophies filled the large wall opposite.