Parma

We left our Agriturismo on June 13 and began the 500-plus Km drive to Parma. We took the autostrade, A14,  just south of Ortona on the Adriatic coast. The drive on the autostrade was easy, with not too many trucks, although the Italian drivers staying in their lanes is always a bit loose! The fuel and restaurant stops were fantastic, with large grocery stores displaying local wine and cheese in abundance.
It was great to stay on the autostrade for the majority of the trip, only had to negotiate the toll booths once. Our GPS got us to our AirBnB with no issues and the location in the tree-lined outskirts of Parma was just right.

The apartment was large and comfortable, on the third floor, so not too many stairs for a change.  The only difficulty we had was turning the car around in a very narrow driveway.  I think we did a ten-point turn!  Good news, there was free parking just steps away from the apartment.

The weather was quite hot, though a thunderstorm did ease the heat for a day.  We walked to the center of Parma on our first day, along wide tree-lined boulevards with many lovely old-world apartment buildings.

We walked along the river that goes through the center of Parma, but with little or no water. It is called Torrente Parma, but no torrents were visible.

The center of Parma is pretty much a traffic-free zone, so walking around the historic area was easy and pleasant.

This is Parma Cathedral, located on the Piazza Duomo.

The Baptistry located next to the Cathedral.

It is very pleasant to have mostly car-free streets, which allows for restaurants to expand dining areas onto the sidewalk.

The Central Post Office, what an amazing place, on the inside it looked as if it was once a palace! 

But the mail was delivered the old fashioned way.

We met our friend Kathleen from San Francisco and spent quite a lot of time checking out restaurants and, of course, doing some shopping.

 It was Diane's birthday during our stay in Parma, so we had a dinner celebration at this restaurant, La Forchetta.  We sat at the table behind the sign.  It was a very warm evening but Diane wanted to sit outside.

 Here we are, waiting for our table.  We got an early sitting at 8pm!

Kathleen joined us and we had a splendid meal that went on until the restaurant closed.

Diane's desert came with a birthday sparkler!

We found a super gelato shop called Ciacco, which had very unusual flavours, all locally sourced and natural, so we made several visits.   It was still very hot, so a good excuse to indulge.

You can see some of the unusual flavours offered in the above photo.

Since our next stop was going to be a letterpress printing and bookmaking workshop, we paid a visit to the Bodoni Museum. Giambattista Bodoni was a very famous printer who designed and made type in Parma in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Those typefaces are still in use today.

The museum is quite large with all of the contents of Bodoni's printing workshops preserved, all 70,000 items.

In the same building as the Bodoni Museum was the Biblioteca Palatina, a wonderful space, but sadly, many of the books looked in need of some restoration.

Again, there were many interesting areas to explore made easy with the lack of traffic. There are many other areas of Parma that we did not explore, reason enough to return.

Lots of opportunities for people-watching.

Next stop, our two-week workshop with Andre Beuchat at Atelier Alma Charta
Stay tuned.