Wednesday 21 June 2023
The weather forecast said 30+ degrees for Parma today and both of us felt a bit meh and worn out. Maybe suffering from all the over-indulgence, maybe also from the horribly fierce aircon in our apartment (but turn the aircon off and it’s just not possible to sleep).
We stuck to just having an explore of Parma. The heat may have dented our enthusiasm for the city a tiny bit. It’s got a handsome old centre and feels more like a “normal” lived-in city than Florence. As tourists we felt like a tiny minority here.
For visits we went into the Duomo to see Corregio’s impressive dome with eerily tumbling figures failing to climb to salvation, and to San Giovanni for an older Corregio dome that was also splendid. Corregio’s masterpiece – in the Camera di San Paolo – was closed today so we mooched around the free puppet museum next door. Italians really do have a big puppetry tradition and there were a whole load of wonderful freaks in here.
We chose a deli restaurant for lunch where we could sample a tasting plate of some of the region’s finest. Culatello is to Parma ham what Parma ham is to mere proscuitto. I personally preferred the salami made from the culatello offcuts, called strolghino di culatello it is only aged for 15 days and tastes divinely of pig. However, still feeling quite meh we settled on eating at home, and bought some fresh filled pasta from the little Pasta del Duomo shop (which is near the duomo, if you couldn’t guess). Yummy.
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