When we first visited Bologna back in 2003 the airport was a small regional airport, and you got there by bus from the city centre.

From memory the driver put your bags in the storage area for you and the bus was something like a standard long distance coach.

Since then the airport has expanded and they have built a monorail that allegedly gets you from the airport to the main railway station in seven minutes.

It’s also expensive at €11 each – by comparison a single ticket from Bologna to Ravenna costs €8.

That is when it runs.

It has continually been plagued by technical problems and often does not run and is replaced by a bus.

And that was the case on the day we tried to use it. After lugging our bags through the station and paying eleven euros each for the monorail they told us it was not running and to use the replacement bus.

The replacement bus was not one of the long distance coaches waiting outside of the station but and ordinary Bologna city bus with no space for luggage. Everyone crammed on somehow but the whole experience was slow and unpleasant.

And then we discovered that a cab from the airport to the railway station costs between twenty and twenty five euros. This is the cost for a standard Bologna city licensed cab – Uber and the rest may be cheaper.

And when we dropped our rental car off we got a cab into the city centre to our overnight hotel it cost us €20, including a tip. The next morning, in the middle of rush hour to get our morning flight to London it cost us €25, again including a tip for the driver.

Sure a cab takes longer – between twenty and thirty minutes depending on traffic, but it will take you straight to your city centre hotel, and the cost is not that different to the monorail.

So, while the monorail is a really cool idea, I’d take a cab if there’s two of you – it might even be cheaper!