Iacta alea est: Monday in Ravenna

We've been wanting very much to go somewhere in Sicily; but unfortunately, the weather hasn't cooperated - according to the Weather Channel app, it's been cold and/or rainy just about anywhere on the island we'd want to visit.  So once again, we find ourselves in the north, back in Emilia-Romagna - this time in Ravenna, where Julius Caesar gathered his legion, allegedly cried "Iacta alea est!" and crossed the Rubicon on his march into history.

We crossed it as well, by train - albeit heading in the opposite direction:

As rivers go, not super impressive these days, actually.

Because we had such a great experience at our B&B in Bologna, we opted to book into one here.  Also, they had a very reasonable rate.  B&B Corso Diaz is located about a 5 minute stroll from the train station, and very well situated for walking around the centro storico.  The décor has an Italian movie theme; so this is the artwork that dominates our room:

Pretty sure this wasn't on the B&B's website.  But Paolo is delighted with it.

Apart from Sophia Loren watching us sleep, the room is fine; it's actually rather large for an Italian hotel room.  And we have a balcony, too, with a fantastic view of what appears to be a parking garage and its adjacent parking lot.

After getting settled, we decided to head out toward one of the main city squares, Piazza del Popolo and from there, find a nice place to have aperitivo and relax before dinner:

Piazza del Popolo

The stairs to the right lead into the Palazzo del Comune

An ancient column that was discovered back in the 16th century and placed here in 1896

From here, we wandered a bit until we came across the Mercato Coperto (Covered Market) a few streets away.  It's huge - there are quite a number of little food shops inside, with everything from wines to pastas to cheeses to salumi, and more...plus, there's a restaurant on the upper floor:

We ended up having a drinks and people (and dog) watching session at a little place right across the street:

Aperitivo

I say we watched people and dogs, because it seems like half the people in Ravenna have dogs by their sides.  Taking one's dog everywhere one goes is actually fairly common in Italy, from what we've observed - but it seems particularly so here.

Following aperitivo, we moved on to dinner; we had a 7:30 reservation at Passatelli 1962.  The restaurant is somehow associated with a movie theatre next door; the dining area also has its own large screen on which episodes of Mr. Bean were projected while we were eating (not a bad choice since there's not really any dialogue you need to follow):

Tortellini emiliani for me and a seafood salad for Paolo

Paolo's seafood risotto was delicious; I ordered orata (bream)

I forgot that in Italy I have to de-bone my own fish.  I grew up listening to the Dr. Demento radio show, and I was reminded of that classic tune, Fish Heads

On our walk back to our room, we noticed that the town was very quiet; we didn't see many other people out and about, even though it wasn't particularly late (note that people do tend to eat earlier here in the north than they do farther south).  As in Bologna, I'm not sure whether Ravenna is always this quiet, or whether it's just like this on Mondays, or if it's this way simply because tourist season hasn't yet really begun.