parma, italy

my cousin’s daughter, libby, who came to visit us in paris last month, lives in parma, italy. she was going home to connecticut for the summer and offered us the use of her apartment. we weren’t going to go, but found out that ryanair offers very, very cheap flights. i booked a weekend at 16 Euros each way for each. funny that the bus to the airport cost 15 Euro, almost the same as the flight itself! we popped down on friday morning very, very early and by noon, were having lunch in an outdoor cafe surrounded by the tuscan colors. the summer in paris has been very overcast and cold, so arriving in italy and having lovely summer weather was wonderful and appreciated. parma is a lovely town in northern italy and is famous for its food, most notably parmesan cheese and parma ham also called prosciutto. for lunch i had pasta with zucchini and shrimp. p had lasagna and enjoyed his dish too, but kept looking over at our neighbor who had ordered plain spaghetti with tomato sauce, basil and mozzarella. he admitted to me that he had “spaghetti envy”. he wished he had ordered that dish. don’t know what the italians do differently, but always, the pasta is incredible.

the whole day was spent wandering the streets and just enjoying being there. that evening we went for drinks on the animated pedestrian shopping street. many of the bars will offer food to go along with their drinks. the food usually isn’t great and the drinks are more expensive, but it’s a fun format. the waitress brought some snacks. i tried to hold back from eating them, since i was expecting to have another great restaurant experience for dinner, but it’s hard for me not to eat something that is in front of me. there are 2 restaurants in parma that are the hot places to go. they actually have the same owner and as we learned later, have the same menu. we went to the first one called “gallo d’oro” [golden rooster].

i couldn’t decide what to order and in the end ordered an eggplant dish as a starter and lasagna as main course. the eggplant dish ended up being eggplant parmesan (surprise...) and the 2 dishes were a bit too similar and heavy. it was good, but no transporting experience tonight.

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