An Unplanned Year

Leaving Milan on a wet day we headed in the direction of Parma.

We stopped off in Cremona to visit the Museo del Violino. Cremona is where Violins were first made.

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Did you know that a violin maker is actually called a ‘Luthier’? We didn’t!

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As well as informing about the history and manufacture of violins, the museum houses a collection of very old, old and modern Violins including a number of Stradivarius and those of his teacher Girolama Il Amati.

The museum also has a programme of performances where the violins in their collection are played by virtuoso. We bought some tickets to that also and watched a short concert. We noted that the violin was accompanied by it’s own armed guard.

After the show we found a cute little tavern for lunch called Ciccus
Osteria EnoDiVinus Prosciutteria. All they serve is Taglieri (charcuterie boards). It was amazing, especially a wild boar salami. SO good.

Cremona was a gorgeous small town.

From there we headed to Parma through some low-lying farmlands, where many of the roads were on levels or raised bridges. They obviously get frequent flooding here.

After arriving in Parma, we left our car at our accommodation and jumped onto a bus into town. 20 mins later we were walking through town. Parma has the most amazing clock on the town hall. It has two sundials and a solar clock. Have no idea how they worked this out with such accuracy several hundred years ago!

We wandered the streets and popped into the first of two churches we visited today. They were both stunning. Does the Sistine Chapel just have a better PR team?

Giuseppe Verde was born in Parma and is highly celebrated here. There is a street with lyrics from some of his operas in lights.

We then had a dinner of several Parma specialities. Fried bread, more delicious meat and salami, fresh mozzarella and parmesan.

Again, yum.

Can we have a moment for the gorgeous wisteria that are in bloom in Italy at the moment?

What to do when it’s wet and miserable.
We left Parma early; destination: Ferrari Museum, Maranello.

With kids at home who would have loved this day, we soaked up everything the museum had to offer. As today was “Made in Italy” day we also got a free gift on entering; a carbon fibre (numbered and allegedly limited edition) fragment with the Ferrari logo on it. We’re thinking add red ribbon and we have a Ferrari christmas tree  ornament.

The museum detailed the history of Ferrari, the car design and development, the Ferrari factory buildings and functions and obviously the cars, the racing and the wins. We looked at and read everything, there were lots of small interesting details, including that the entire factory complex  is almost carbon neutral, generating almost all the electricity they require to manufacture the cars and run the business.

There was one section on Ferrari Tailor made where one (those buying a car) can choose the colours of everything for the car. We perused the paint options, leather colours, rims options etc and (pretended) selected the colours for the exterior and interior of the car that we will never buy. Kevin went original, Ferrari red, with Black interior and Ferrari red trim. Sarah went for a blueish-greenish-turquoisish-jadeish colour, with black leather and a custom blueish-greenish-turquoisish-jadeish leather trim.

Next up was a number of post 2000 F1 cars and trophies, followed by a range of vintage cars and Le Mans cars.

Finally we both took a seven minute spin in an F1 simulator. Neither of us are going to be selected as drivers for any team – chicanes are trickier than they look!

Disappointing, though not unexpected,  was the cost of their merchandise. Sorry F1 fans/kids, nobody is getting a gift.
From there we headed to Modena for lunch and a stroll.  Lunch was not in a restaurant, but at a stall in a food market called Tortellin e Vino. It was so good with tigella, erbazzone, foccacia modena, meat, cheese, pork crackling, red wine and a dessert tortellini.

We then wandered around Modena looking at the main church and houses dating back to the 1600’s.

We then drove to Bologna where we are staying for the next two nights. Our accommodation is an old Monastery!

A slightly lazy day today, only 11000 steps. We wandered into Bologna to do nothing really, just to wander and to look around the city.
Bologna is a city with about 24km of porticos along their streets. (Can you believe we didn’t take a photo of a single one). These would keep you dry on a rainy day, and protected from the sun on a sunny day. Today we had sunshine.

We wandered through some markets selling meat, cheese and fish.

And pasta.

We tried some local biscuits, some arancini and croquetta and the ubiquitous Aperol Spritz.

We visited the Piazza Maggiore and Basilica di San Petronia.

The basilica has a meridian line on the floor that is lit by the sun at noon each day – if the sun is out. The line has a calendar marked alongside it in the marble. How did people understand this hundreds of years ago?

We went in search of Bologna’s canals, the last few remaining canals at least. One was just a noise we could hear coming from behind a row of houses but is visible from the terrace of a small restaurant.

One is viewed from Finestrella di via Piella a literal hole-in-the-wall.

We spent 2 hours over lunch, eating two Bolognese specialities, Tortellini in broth

And Tagliatelle a la Bolognese.

After lunch we came across a wine tasting bar.
The wine tasting was not the traditional people telling you about nose/body/bouquet and all that nonsense. Here you had the opportunity to taste 24 wines (we did 5) and then with a sommelier game on a tablet you had the opportunity to test your skills.
Categories were colour, smell, taste, description and persistence and you were scored according to how closely you match a sommeliers assessment.

Sarah showed her skills by winning 4-1, the only match Kevin won was after he’d given Sarah some food to confuse her palate. It was a fun couple of hours.