Bologna, Friday September 6th. I start this way to remind me of where I am and what the date is. We’ve been moving around a bit.
We were about to head to Riomaggiore, the southernmost of the five villages of the CT. The ferry was on time and crowded. But we found seats on the open top deck and enjoyed a ride. Seeing the Cinque Terre from the water really helps to hammer home exactly how isolated these villages are. It really makes one wonder how they ended up here and how they survived here. Our guesses are 1. someone made it over the mountains and down to the sea and said no way I’m dong that again... or 2. they survived a shipwreck. This is a beautiful and isolated area.
We agree of the 5 CT villages Riomaggiore is our favorite with Monterosso al Mare the clear second. Manarola was our least favorite and Corniglia and Vernazza were tied for the middle. It was worth the effort to visit these villages. Might even consider it again sometime, but we’re pretty sure we won’t be walking between them, at least not in the heat.
We arrived in Parma without incident and settled into our hotel then went exploring. We ended up picking up cheese and prosciutto and a bottle of wine and “picnicked” in our room. It was nice to have a quiet evening.
Thursday (was it really just yesterday?) we took a pretty amazing food tour. We went to a small Parmigiano Reggiano cheese producer. These are run as consortiums with the producer/farmer group controlling both the milk production as well as the cheese production. In addition to some delicious cheese, this dairy used the whey by product to produce ricotta cheese and the cream by product to produce butter. All were sampled at the end of the tour and all were wonderful. Next we headed to a prosciutto factory, YUM! Fun fact prosciutto can only be produced in a small geographic region and the pigs must have been born and raised there. If the factory uses pigs from outside the region they are forbidden to call it prosciutto.
Lunch was at a small restaurant. They were great at accommodating my gluten free needs. Both Lester and I became members of the clean plate club. As did most of the people on tour with us.
Our last stop was a balsamic factory. Again a small artisan shop with an amazing product. We actually purchased a 20 year old balsamic. We’re kinda hoping Will will make us some vanilla ice cream as a canvas for our inaugural tasting.
This morning we woke to cooler, wetter, weather - the first rain we have encountered. Packed our bags and headed for Modena which was a colorful town with a wonderful market. Might make an argument for settling in an apartment for a month or two to explore and cook with what I’m sure are some quality ingredients. We ended up the day wandering the streets of Bologna. Stumbled on a nice hotel and settled in for the evening. Tomorrow we will head off the beaten path to two small villages recommended by our food tour guide. Fingers crossed he is as knowledgeable about these small towns as he was about creating traditional products of the region.
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