Modena: The city of balsamic vinegar, luxury cars, and Romanesque architecture

Above was the original title of my post, but I didn’t really get to do any of those things so my new title is: Trains. Because that is exactly what I did.

I already planned to spend a good amount of time on trains today, Novara to Modena is about 3.5 hours but there was a little snag in my day: a dead body. No joke. As we were about to leave Milan for Modena a cadaver was found at the train station. Everything was at a halt for over an hour. Although I know I shouldn’t complain, because the cadaver was having a worse day than I was, it did create an unexpected negative outcome: everything was closed by the time I got to Modena for siesta.

Modena is a smaller town so still more traditional and everything, and I mean everything (shops, museums, churches, restaurants etc.), were closed from around 12:30/1:00 until 15:30-ish. I arrived just in time to spend these closing hours in Modena. My return train to Novara was at 16:25 and I did not trust myself (because I always get lost) to pay, enter a museum for half an hour and then find the station. So I do what I do best and which is free: I walked around.