Ciao, ciao, from Parma! It is awesome here, and unanimously (easier with two people, we know) our favorite stop so far. Bellagio has some big shoes to fill.
As briefly mentioned in the Day 2 Dubrovnik post, were up at 5:30 AM to hop on the bus to the Dubrovnik airport, and on the journey to the bus stop we experienced one of the most memorable moments during our time in the city. Empty, silent streets with only a few industrious morning-shifters preparing the streets for another onslaught of tourists were all that we encountered in the mile walk; it drove home both the enormity and the antiquity of the Old City. Not enough credit is given to giant cities when they are sleeping.
The airport experience in Dubrovnik was pretty great; we got a ride to the airport 45 minutes early because the company selling our tickets decided to bring 5 of us (us two, an older German couple, and a very talkative Milanese guy) in a van vs making us wait for the bus. Anywhere else this would be a very epic pre-kidnapping overture; in Croatia it’s just what the hell happens and if you don’t like it then you can wait 45 more minutes to take a GD bus, you uptight Americans!!
The Malpensa arrival was a bit more awful as there were 2 people working the passport desk and literally 275 people waiting to get through and it was a terrifying bloodbath to get on the train shuttle after it arrived 6 hours late and 400 people clawed each other out of the way to occupy 40 spots. Luckily we are both awesome at clawing and our giant backpacks work well at knocking others out of the way. The bathrooms at the baggage claim area also had a huge line, not helped by what we thought was a shrill child locked in a bathroom stall but turned out to be a tiny, tiny old woman who flew out of there like a bat out of hell once she was finally released. We are still not sure what happened.
Which brings us to here. We have another fantastic AirBnB with the best hosts in the world, again, and Alfredo has given us a full list everything we must see, do, eat, and avoid, and it’s a good list.
We’ve eaten more in the last 3 meals than we did in the first 6 days combined; it’s easy to do so when a pound of Parmesan cheese regularly precedes each main course and insanely awesome wine costs €11 per bottle instead of per glass. If anyone reading this is jonesin’ to come here now (which you absolutely should be), the dishes of choice and for good reason are Tortellini D’Erbeta and Culotello ham. And all of the wine and cheese. Go with it.
Besides eating, we have decided that the best things about Parma are how quiet it is (especially compared to a decibel level of electric-to-the-point-of-short-circuiting, which it actually did in a restaurant if you read the last post from Croatia), how friendly and laid back everyone is, and how unreal the shopping is, which we weren’t expecting at all. Everything in every store is 40-50% off right now and I bought two pairs of Italian leather flats that were supposed to be €145 Euro but were €30 this week. We thought that this was just a sales ploy for impressionable tourists like us, but then we learned that A) we weren’t in a tourist town and no one could understand why we were visiting here and B) in January and the 2nd week of July in Italy, giant sales hit for about 4 weeks until inventory is gone and it’s customary to being selling at 40% discounts all the way up to 60 or 75%. We magically and unknowingly arrived at the peak of every good deal in the city, and it is the most glorious.
Besides being unabashed hedonists, we also spent lots of time in churches and beautiful city landmarks today! Parco Ducale is now my favorite new park in the world (I described it to someone in a postcard as like Wash Park in Denver except with more deciduous trees and a giant palace in the middle of it that everyone regards as completely normal), and the Piazza Duomo, which houses the Baptistery, the Cathedral, and the Bishop’s palace, is incredibly gorgeous and an absolute hidden gem in Italy. We had these magnificent buildings virtually all to ourselves to explore, except for a very lovely older nun who told us a story in Italian for 20 minutes (we timed it) and we still aren’t exactly sure what was said except we think she was telling us that she was glad we had modest dresses on because this one woman did not dress sensibly or with modesty and was really unhappy for her whole life and had a baby that no one would help her with and it wasn’t worth it just to wear revealing clothing. And she held our hands and called us beautiful and intelligent. Yas.
All for today – fat and happy and ready for sleep after what was surely too much food. Off to Bellagio tomorrow – triple Ciao!
