13 July

13 July

Parma.  We all kind of liked Parma.  I don't know that I would have chosen to come if I knew we weren't going to do a food tour, but it was a nice relaxing break before Venice.  Because our one full day in Parma was a Sunday, pretty much everything was closed again. Parma is known for its food, so we found a list of great places to get cheese, ham, salami, etc., and all of them were closed.  We managed, but it was another disappointment.

On the bright side, since we had limited options, we went with what we could do. We visited Teatro Farnese, which was the largest covered theater until the 17th century and has amazing carvings, very elaborate.  It was actually bombed during WWII, but detailed models, drawings and photos survived, so they rebuilt it.  I thought it was pretty neat.  Then we went to a puppet museum, which was also small but interesting.  Hand-carved wooden marionettes (for some unknown reason, which I couldn't ask about in Italian, a huge proportion of the puppets had giant boils on their head or goiters on their necks--really strange).  There were some fun videos of puppet shows there that we watched for a while. The boys enjoyed the smoking marionette and the opera mice.

We had reservations for dinner, so just grabbed a quick bite for lunch and went to the Parco Ducale, a huge park with a bunch of walking (and biking) trails, benches, and a pond full of turtles and giant fish, with a tiny island in the middle.  A woman paddled out to the island in a little inflatable raft while we were there. The water was green and did not look inviting, but the park overall was lovely.  The boys wandered off on their own and Lane and I enjoyed our lunch and did a bunch of people watching. It is much more fun to people-watch when you think you're actually watching Italians, not just a bunch of tourists.  This is definitely a park where families and people of all ages hang out on a Sunday (nothing else to do, I guess, since all the shops and restaurants are closed!)

I decided that my favorite thing about Parma is all the bikes. It is the most incredibly bike-friendly city I've ever seen. Everything is flat, streets have very little traffic, cars travel slowly, and a bike seems like the preferred form of transportation for people of all ages.  I saw lots of older people on bikes, businesspeople, women in long skirts, teenagers and twenty-somethings, parents with their kids in a bike seat on the front, people with baskets on their bikes, and (cheating a little bit, since I saw this on Monday) a mail carrier making the rounds on his official bicycle with panniers, baskets, and bags of all kinds in official Italian Poste yellow everywhere you could possibly put a container for mail.  Finn didn't want to rent bikes and ride around, though he did enjoy the park.

We had some amazing gelato at an Emilia gelateria--so smooth and creamy, and they put chocolate sauce in the bottom of the cone, which was new.

Dinner at a place recommended as being authentic and not crazy-tourist-expensive.   We started with appetizers of Reggiano cheese (the first appetizer Finn has just loved), picked vegetables, and local cold cuts (this has a cooler name in Italian, but I can't think of it at the moment). Lane and Coen both got the rabbit, I got the Emilia Lasagna, and Finn the pasta bianca as usual (pasta with olive oil and parmesan). All was good.