Fitting the pieces together.

Up and early today and we were in little Pietro before 7:20 and headed for the Autrostrada and Ravenna.
A little after 9am we arrived at our destination, Ravenna. I must say using the SatNav sure makes
the driving in unknown places easy but, at first it is hard to trust the device.  Quite often I feel we are being directed in the complete wrong direction, but thanks to Kate (our nickname for the girl in the SatNav) we do pretty well.

We selected to go to Ravenna on a short day trip to see the amazing mosaics in the UNESCO listed buildings.

On research of the area I discovered Koko Mosaico a Studio, classroom and workshop for mosaic creators run by artist and great bloke, Luca Barberini. He runs many different courses on creating mosaics and we decided to take the half day course.  He explained everything from the history of mosaics, through to the current process. He then let us loose to create our own mosaic.  We selected images taken from the art in the local historical buildings.

After placing the special cement mixture on the frames we were then let loose, with a little guidance of course, to put all the pieces together of our chosen designs. We had such a fun day and the time just flew by. We enjoyed chatting with Luca and his colleagues and other students who were working on some amazing pieces.

We also purchased one of Luca's creations, but it is all wrapped so you will all have to wait till we are home.

Luca also provided us with a great stop for lunch around the corner Al Passatore. We started with a warm bruschetta. I selected the Cappelletti al Ragù which are like torttelini, but filled with cheese and Katie selected the Tortelloni burro e salvia (more like a ravioli shape in butter and sage).

The food was great, it helps when it is made local on site.

Finishing the day in Ravenna we wandered through all the Unesco sites Luca recommended. They were amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

The drive back to Modena was again on the AutoStrada, a pretty good drive, but did have some bad traffic for about 6 km around Bologna.  It is amazing driving on these freeways, the speed limit is 130Kph. However there are others driving much faster than us and I think I'm the only one using indicators when changing lanes.

Tomorrow, more Modena.