November 12, 2015

 

 

Sprint to the Finish

For those of you who have following this blog faithfully, we’re sorry.  We wouldn’t have lasted past day two if we would have had to read it.  We woke up, we did this, we went there, we ate that, we went to bed and here’s a picture.  We think it will be fun to look at in five years but we know how mind numbing it must be right now.  We haven’t had a comment on the blog since Croatia so we hope everyone had the good sense to move along.  Only five more nights in Italy so almost done.

We are taking this opportunity to share that thought because this day is worth about a paragraph.  We check out of our apartment this morning.  John has to take the recyclables up to the Santa Maria Novella Square to the big containers.  While out he decides to pick up some cash for the next few days and starts aimlessly wandering looking for an ATM.  This wandering lasts for about 15 minutes before he finds a legitimate looking bank, gets the cash, walks out and has no idea where he is.  We thought you could blindfold us and drop us in the middle of Florence and we would be able to find our apartment but maybe not.  It only takes about five more minutes of wandering to find a landmark and he finally makes it back after a half hour of a five minute chore.  Senility?

Miki showed up for checkout at the agreed upon time of 11:00.  We tried to stretch it out because we have a rental car reserved for 1:00.  She offers to let us leave our luggage and keep our building keys for a while but we decide to move along.  We walk back up to the SMN square and check for an Uber car—none available.  We think moving to the train station will improve our odds so we walk up the street and try again.  Sure enough he is 7 minutes away and coming to get us.  We stopped about a block and a half short of the station thinking this would be a better pick-up point away from the other crowds waiting for rides of some sort.  The whole idea is that the Uber car will come to the GPS signal from your phone so you can really be anywhere.  After 15 minutes he called and said he was at the station.  We told him where we were waiting.  12 minutes later we see him zooming past away from us.  We call him and he tells us that he waited 10 minutes at the station and is leaving.  We tell him that we have been waiting longer than that for him to pick us up.  He blows us off and we huff and puff about stupido Italiano “bleeps” while we walk the rest of the way to the station to get a taxi.  The taxi driver is fine, the Hertz guy is fine and we’re on the road by 12:30 feeling better about Italianos.

Destination today is Parma.  We have a little Nissan Pulsar with a diesel engine that moves along very well.  We take the longer route going west (after having missed the second turn out of the Hertz parking lot), first past Luca and Pisa to the coast at Viareggio and then up to La Spezia before turning northeast and inland.  We do the Autostrada rest stop for lunch where the big news is that Mary got a large size Toblerone chocolate bar for half price.  We also shared a tuna salad and ham and cheese panini but that is old news.

Going inland we move into the mountains and pass Carrara.  There must be miles of marble producing companies along the highway and we can see up into the mountain where the quarries have stripped large slices from the sides.  Earlier we had passed the Regina plant where they make the red wine vinegar we use at home and later we go past the Barilla Pasta plant which we also use.  This two hour part of the drive is very scenic with tunnels through the mountains and great river and valley views.  Eventually we start down into the flatter landscape around Parma.  This is a food excursion (as if this whole trip wasn’t) and Parma in Emilia Romagna is ground zero for Italian food. Can’t wait.

We have dueling GPS systems, one on the phone and one built into the car.  The car has a British accent and Sami on the phone is obviously American.  Most times they agree but they express themselves differently.  Both are right on getting us to Villini di Porporano in the little village of Porporano right outside of Parma.  This is a five room B&B with nice facilities and beautiful fenced grounds.  Our hostess, Elena will show up later but her teenage son Niccolo gets us settled in and says all the right things.  Good coaching.

Elena eventually comes knocking on our door and she is a bubbling teapot of energy.  She calls our guide for tomorrow, her close personal friend Alice (Ah-LEE-che) and then she calls the restaurant in town for reservations tonight because they are her close personal friends.  She is dying to do more for us but we don’t need anything else.  She seems disappointed.  We are her only guests tonight so she is taking all of her customer service out on us and we sort of like it.

The restaurant, Mora, opens at 7:30, maybe 7:45 or whenever they’re ready.  This is real small town stuff with family doing all the jobs, good food, low prices and not a tourist in sight.  They do have English menus so Elena must send all of her customers there.  We start with a cheese plate, a selection of Parmigiano cheeses both hard and soft as well as a nice gorgonzola. It comes with a big bowl of bread puffs—don’t know how else to describe them—that are hot and airy like popovers and get cold and soggy just as fast as popovers.  Mary then gets the spinach ravioli, a local specialty and John has the rabbit stew, spicy and good.  Each of the plates is 9 euros but the wine is less so we can afford it.

When we leave we walk down one of the little country roads that branches off of what passes for Main Street and in 50 feet we’re out in the country.  We are greeted by a couple big dogs (behind a fence) that seem happy to have the company.  They are black with German Shephard heads but all the moves of some sort of sheep dog.  We’ll have to look them up.  They run along the fence herding us for a while before losing interest.  Back to read for a minute and off to bed.

What did we learn today?  The ever-changing topography of Italy is the greatest influence on the localized way of life from one valley to the next.