Parma Day 3

Saturday, April 28, 2007 4:30 in the PM
Good afternoon. I just got up from a nap with my husband. We didn’t even get up early so I don’t really have any justification to my naptime. We got up whenever we felt like it which turned out to be 8:30 or something. Ate the wonderful breakfast, this time had a boiled egg. Luke timed it for like 3 minutes. We got them and the white part was still clear so we made new ones and they were at 10 min and the yellow part was firm and gel like. Perfect. The yolks were so yellow they were almost red. I guess that means they are farm eggs. We took some more nutella to the room and got going. We headed to the Parma Ham museum in Langhirano, which is like 15 miles away, except it takes like 40 min to get to. It takes 15 minutes to get out of the city part of Parma and then you go through several small towns along the way. It was a very nice drive, we got to see some scenery and smell some pigs. I must say I am glad to smell the pigs intermittently through a car window rather than smell the sewers in Florence. I don’t know if we mentioned that interesting fact. Every once in a while you’d smell- along the street, in the elevator, you name it, a VERY strong smell. Like a dog took a fresh crap or someone uses that street for a toilet at night. We decided that it was the sewers that smelled. They were awful. Ok, then I’ll return to the subject at hand…pigs, yes pigs.
So we arrived at the small town Langhirano and found the museum. It had a large parking lot where there were a few cars like 6 or something parked, Luke noted that there were no tour buses. We went to where we guessed the entrance was, there was a little square where there was an empty café. We got the tickets that were €3 and were directed to the beginning of the exhibit. It was pretty low key. I could have given this presentation via powerpoint. They gave minimal information in English but the guide book, which was pretty thick considering the material presented on the walls (½ inch thick), was €8. TOO Much. The guidebook at the Uffizi was only €10 and that had copy written works of art. Oh well. We suffered through and gleaned what we could. There were lots of pictures and some pieces of equipment and a short movie was shown. To the defense of the Parma Museo del Proscuitto there was nothing much else for us to do food related (at this notice on a Sat) besides eat.
We saw this big castle on a hill on the way. A pamphlet we picked up talked about it. I was pretty excited to go there, even if we didn’t pay to go in, just go up there to see the view and take a few pictures of the castle. We went up there and it was also €3 each. We spent over an hour up there. They had a few interior rooms with the old frescoed décor on the walls. Luke and I have experience navigating through defunct castles a la’ Scotland. So we quite enjoyed that bit. The views were suberb, there was a bit of haze at the distant horizon. I don’t know if that was pollution or humidity. They also had a bed and breakfast beneath the castle walls but still up the STEEP hill. The little “village” was quaint and close together and I tried to take some lovely photos that are worthy of the mayo quarterly. We’ll see. While we were wandering around taking pictures we kept seeing all these lightning fast lizards, little and so quick that they are a blur. They kind of freak me out, almost like mice, they are so scary cause they are fast.
We left eventually and stopped at a HUGE Conad store (grocery store chain in Parma) and were quite satisfied to look around. Luke wanted some of the sugar substitute (we brought some with us for our own caffé in the AMs but they were drained in Florence between the 4 of us and we all drank coffee). We also got these chocolate fiber biscuits, they taste like a chocolate granola bar crossed with cracklin’ oat bran. We also bought a few half liters of milk and some chicken in a can, tralli crackers, and little bread stick like things. I got a pair of little thin beige socks that you wear under your dress shoes- mainly because my croc sandals squeak so bad with slightly sweaty feet, Luke got a jar of nutella (Conad brand) and some more €1.13 one and a half liter bottles of Fanta free and a new kind we tried that is lemon pop and tastes like a fake lemon soda like mountain dew with more lemon flavor. We got an orange flavor in that brand too. Much to my sisters dismay I should say that we have been enjoying Kinder brand Bueno chocolate bars. We got smart today and bought a 3 pack of them today, we also bought a 4 pack of the knock-off Duplos which are not as superior a product as the former. We each grabbed a pizza slice at the end of our trip to the store and ate that in the car as it was 2pm.
We arrived back to the hotel like 10-15 min later. For lunch we had a bit of makeshift tuna salad with a little tbsp of processed cheese, mustard, salt, pepper and senape (mustard to you non Italians) on potato chips. I must say it was very good. It almost reminded me of home. Not that Luke makes good tuna salad for me at home but it reminded me of my tuna salad I make at home. We drank some soda and I was the one who suggested the nap. Luke woke up a few minutes ago. We may go back to the same restaurant we were at yesterday. It was a very good restaurant but do we want to say we went to the same place twice? We want to get the fried pasta and meat. That’s what looked good. We’ll maybe go look at the city and it’s special churches lit. Maybe also go read in that park and relax in non touristy Italy. We’ll see. We’ll run now. ljf