la prima colazione

I think I have that translation right (thank you, Google Translate!).  La prima colazione, or breakfast.  Our hotel in Bologna was the only one of the three (well, also leaving aside Rome, which was one night at an airport hotel) that didn't offer breakfast.  And that was fine!  Because each morning we could emerge from the hotel courtyard into the protico and head east.  Before we made it to the next corner, there was Caffè Letterario - Sebastiano Caridi.  Ah, what a delightful convenience and a convenient delight!

We never really got the hang of ordering the coffees we wanted in Italy.  Conrad made the mistake on the first morning in Ischia of asking for a latte, not realizing that he would get only milk.  Shorthand doesn't work!  I always managed to get my decaf, happily.  But we realized that we wanted something with two shots, and sometimes that came with a lot of milk and sometimes not.  At another hotel we came to order it as a macchiato, but even then it wasn't always the same.  By the end, I was asking for cappuccinos, and that was fine.  But the inconsistency from place to place and even at a single place was a little maddening.  It also didn't help that at Caffe Letterario it was never consistent on where and how we ordered - inside, at the counter, with a waiter?  Who knew.  Each morning was an adventure.

What was indisputable was that the caffe knew its food.  Those pastries? 

Conrad eventually started getting one savoury and one sweet, and that was a lot, but also so good.

We were there every morning in Bologna, not even bothering to find another place to try to start our day.  So good.  And, as a bonus, a beautiful church across the street

that we popped into a couple of times to admire.

Breakfast, Italian style, as utterly bastardized by three North Americans - maybe not super traditional but undeniably good!