Bologna              Ducati Factory Tour
	Time to leave the lake area for the "heart" of Italy...
	... I only stopped to think to myself, "I'll definitely be back!" and I was off. BTW, these pictures were taken along the road that led from Ponte Tresa to Lugano.
	I wanted to arrive in Bologna as early as possible so that I'd be on time for my Ducati Factory tour. I only needed to stop once for gas and it was here, where motorcycles have their own parking area and motorcyclists have their own patio to enjoy refreshment.
	Soon I was there. Only problem was... they weren't expecting me??!?!
	Happily, me only being one person, they made room for me in the tour I THOUGHT I was scheduled for. This was our tour guide.
	First we did the factory part of the tour. No cameras/photography allowed. This big building housed the assembly lines of the different lines of bikes. Each bike was completely assembled by either one or two people. i.e. from start to finish, that person or those two people put the bike together. It was really interesting to see the stages of assembly and especially interesting to see that hundreds of bikes were put together each day by a minimum amount of people. All that red and black looked really impressive, too!
	After the factory tour, we went to the museum where you COULD take pictures. There was a display of how Ducati started... radios, adding machines and then...
	... motors that propelled bicycles.
	The rest, as they say, is history.
	The museum housed many of Ducati's famous or ground-setting bikes, like this one that set a land-speed record.
	I found the full size draft drawings very interesting.
	Of course there were many bikes sporting their #1 plates...
	... and there were cool "unique limited editions" like this ice bike.
	There was a huge display of Troy Bayliss paraphenalia.
	...
	Of course, he's won three World Superbike championships and is responsible for much of the silverware in the trophycase.
	I suppose his 2001, 2006 and 2008 championship bikes are among these.
	THIS was a cool trophy.
	Let's not forget that Casey Stoner won the MotoGP atop a Ducati in 2007.
	As I walked out of the building, I noticed this bike, ready for pickup directly from the factory.
	I also met Susanna from California who, like me, was going to the Mugello round of the MotoGP on the weekend. "PinkyRacer" was a really neat person!
	I took a few outside shots of the factory...
	... before heading back for the hotel for a much needed "rest day".
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