Writing this post in the Rimini Blogville office
Photograph by Suzanne (The Travel Bunny)
Last Saturday saw the end of an amazing couple of months for bloggers in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy. Home to the medieval town of Bologna, the food capital of the country, and Rimini, a seaside party town, this region was completely unknown to me despite the fact that I had visited Italy many times before. So when I had the chance to visit the area for the last few days of ‘BlogVille’ I quickly booked my place!
The BlogVille concept was born when Melvin from the travellers’ website, Travel Dudes and Kash from Budget Traveller, teamed up with Nick from the Emilia-Romagna tourist board.
With a base in Bologna, followed by another in Rimini, they invited travel bloggers to come and discover this beautiful region that is so often overlooked by visitors to Italy.
I spent a couple of days in Bologna with Suzanne from The Travel Bunny, before we both joined the BlogVille crew in Rimini. Although we’ve chatted through our blogs and twitter since last year we’ve never actually met but when we did it felt as if we’d been good friends for years and we really have shared a fantastic time together. We’ve visited many lovely places, enjoyed some truly fabulous food and met many wonderful people.
Emilia-Romagna’s anominity is ending as over 50 bloggers from around the world including Europe, America and New Zealand are now sharing their experiences of BlogVille across the internet. The youngest BlogVille inhabitant was just 7 months old and the oldest was in their fifties although the average age was early thirties.
The project was the first of its kind but I’m sure it won’t be the last as it has proved a great success for both the bloggers and Emilia-Romagna. With thousands of tweets, pins, Facebook and Instagram posts being shared throughout the project and hundreds of articles being written about the area, Emilia-Romagna is enjoying a wave of genuine and enthusiastic publicity that only bloggers can provide.
To kick-start my BlogVille posts here’s a collection of my photos from throughout the week which I hope will give you just a hint about the amazing time I’ve had, the new friends I’ve made and the laughs we have shared!
I’d like to thank Nicholas (from the Emilia-Romagna Tourist Board), Suzanne, Erin (from Our Tasty Travels), Norbert (from GloboTreks) and everyone else who made this such a memorable week.
Join my 'Behind the Scenes' newsletter
Delivered monthly to your inbox with all my behind the scenes news, latest posts and giveaways exclusive to my subscribers.
Travel Planning Resources
Please note that most of the following links are affiliate links which means that if you click on the link, I may be paid a small commission. You can find out more about affiliate links in my Disclaimer..
Travel Insurance
I never travel without insurance. If something unexpected goes wrong the costs implications are just too high to take the risk. World Nomads provides travel insurance to travellers from over 130 countries. They're the perfect choice for long term travellers or single trip insurance.
Travel clothes for women
Check out my guide to all my favourite travel clothes for women.
Book your hotel or package holiday
TripAdvisor is my preferred hotel search engine. They compare all the top sites to find you the best deal. I also use Airbnb ($31 discount) for booking rooms/apartments.
Rent a car
Discover Car Hire is a great site for comparing car hire prices to help you find the best deal. They search both local and international rental companies.
Book an experience
When I’m travelling, especially to a new city, I use Viator and Get Your Guide to book tours and excursions, in particular, food walking tours or to visit somewhere tricky to get to by public transport.
Don’t forget your travel adaptor
Worldwide travel adaptors are perfect no matter where you are travelling from or to. Buy this one from the US or this one from the UK
I’m a tour guide of Emilia-Romagna where Rimini, Bologna, Ravenna, Ferrara….. (and more) are situated. If You’d like to find more info about these amazing cities look for my FB page. You will be welcome! Ciao! Barbara
Hi Barbara, Lovely to hear from you. I’ll pop over now and have a look on your page.
Here’s mine! Travel with Kat
Blogville sounds like a brilliant way for tourist boards to get the word out about their regions. i hope I can attend one some day.
It was great fun too! I learned about it from Travel Dudes monthly newsletter.
Great idea Blogville. I’m glad Emilia is getting some play among travel bloggers especially after the earthquakes earlier this year.
Yes and it was great to be a part of it. We visited one of the towns damaged in the earthquake, Ferrara. Beautiful place! http://www.aluxurytravelblog.com/2012/07/23/my-top-5-reasons-to-visit-the-italian-town-of-ferrara-this-summer/
Blogville was brilliant! So lovely to have met you properly together with Erin and Norbs. Loved exploring Emilia Romagna and testing out all those gelatos! I’m looking forward to more photos and follow-up posts 😀
..and more gelatos! 😉 There must be somewhere in the UK that does a good one! looking forward to your posts too!
Wonderful photo collage! Look forward to reading the stories behind them.
Thanks Madhu. We had such a great time.
Great photo collage and post! I forgot about the pic of Norbs and I. HAHA. Such a great time meeting you guys – really cannot wait until the next one!
Me too. Hope we can all meet up again sometime! Email me at travelwithkat@rocketmail.com if you’d like copies of the photos I have of you and Norbs.
Sounds like a brilliant time! How do you hear about these conferences or blog parties? I’d love to attend one.
Yes, it was great and so lovely to meet Suzanne in person. In this case I heard about it through Travel Dudes’ Newsletter. There’s a link to their site in the article. YOU should also check out Travel Bloggers Unite http://www.travelbloggersunite.com/
It looks fantastic! I did a weekend in Bologna for the Imola Grand Prix years ago but don’t know a lot more about the region. Hope they’ll do it again next year so I can come along!
You know, I was just thinking that last night. Wouldn’t it be fun. Suzanne and I are a bit worried that we’ll be writing about the same things over the next few weeks and we’ve got a lot of very similar photos too but it could also make it interesting as we’ll write things from different perspectives. Hope we don’t bore those of you who read both our blogs. Next year there may well be three of us or more. Hope so!