A travel destination halfway between our EasyJet flight to Milan and our group destination of Rimini. It wasn’t the most pleasant of travel days, but not the worst either. Getting to the airport by 7:30 in the morning, after staying up most evenings until at least 2AM, was the most arduous of it all. Oh, and then a train ride that finally landed us in town in the mid-afternoon.
All-in-all, though, Parma is a low-key college town. It has an well-preserved old town center, one main street of cafes and a large central park. Outside of these areas, at least to our eyes, it looked like an industrial town. That impression could possibly come from the sole fact that our hotel was located on the edge of town in the industrial section, um, just past the prostitutes. Hey, it was a decent enough Best Western hotel, but it did come with a smattering of too many mosquitoes in the lobby.
Since we were only there for a late afternoon/ early morning transit stop, we didn’t see much of it, but we did get an enjoyable outdoor cafe-white tablecloth-dinner with overloaded plates of Parma ham and Parmesan cheese and wine (all which originated from this region). The weather was pleasant, but we were beginning to discover that our group of 6 friends was not one for expedient decisions… about anything.
One of our group had just met a guy on the plane flight over, and so three of the group stuck around in the morning to meet him and to get a tour of the town, while the other half of us moved on to the next town.
