The Road to Parma

September 25, 2021

Wine Country, Everywhere is Wine Country

The road to Parma was much like every other route we have taken in Italy so far. It was a mixture of villages, farm land and a few larger towns. For a country with a well developed mass transit network it certainly has plenty of vehicles on its roadways causing us to take a fairly zig-zag route from town to town to avoid as much traffic as we can. Still, there are place where you need watch your rear view mirror as much as the road ahead. Italian roads are narrow with small or no shoulders. However, bike lanes, while sometimes rough, are almost always present in the larger towns.

Why so many ruins?
A late bloomer

We are riding near the end of the grape harvest. Many of the vines are empty while a few still have some grapes being harvested. There are other crops as well and the region is also known for its ham and cheese.

Nothing says ham like Homer

Our destination city of Parma is quite famous for ham and cheese as well as being a center for art and architecture. The Parma River was not much to look at being mostly wrung dry by field irregation and where it passes through the city it seems to collect a lot of graffiti where its course is contained by walls. The Ducal Palace and surrounding parkland makes for a pleasant stroll and the nearby Pallazo della Pilotta palace houses a museum as well as a center for the arts.

The Ducal Palace
Sculpture outside of the Arts Center

Today involved over 120 kilometers of riding but almost totally flat roads. Tomorrow we return to a more common landscape with hills of both the up and down variety.

The Parma River in all its glory