Parma and Venice
After Firenze (Florence), we stayed in Parma with our friends the Dorigo Family. This town north of Florence offered another local Italian food cuisine, much of it using the Parmesan cheese that originated in this town. While I don’t eat Italian food at every meal at home, checking out the local cuisine as we traveled was a big part of our Italian adventure. The pizzas appeared to always be cooked in wood-fired ovens, and they generally had very thin crusts. We found many variations in their taste, and they are something that I will always savor about Italy.
Parma is off the beaten track for most tourists, but it has numerous medieval and historical buildings and a friendly populace. Being home to opera composer Verdi and orchestral conductor Toscanini, the town also has a rich musical heritage.
We took the train from Parma to Venice on Wednesday morning. The train station is right at the edge of the water, with one of the Venetian islands just across a busy waterway. Our next mode of transportation was a water taxi that took us down part of the Grand Canal and along some other waterways to within a two-minute walk from our hotel.
We have seen narrow, winding pedestrian-only cobblestone streets in the old sections of many other European towns, but Venice’s streets are nearly all either this way or they consist of water. This setting, and the total lack of automobiles, is why Venice lives up to its reputation as a unique destination. We had heard that the most popular areas in town can be shoulder-to-shoulder, particularly if a cruise ship has just docked. However, we were blessed with low crowds, clear skies and cool breezes.
Whatever crowds we did find were easy to escape amongst the hundreds of paths through the various districts of the city. Except for following the signs to the famous Rialto Bridge from Piazza San Marco (the large St. Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco) you always see in photographs), constant reference to a map was a necessity except when you wanted to get lost in this romantic town. Here are Elizabeth, Natalie and me at the Piazza.
I found one of Venice’s most interesting aspects to be the eastern influences evident in its architecture. This was a result of its being at the crossroads of the east and west during its heyday as a busy trading port five centuries ago. I also found it amazing that paintings of the town from that era looked virtually identical to what we saw.
Our stay in Venice was capped by a gondola ride that included a tenor accompanied by an accordionist. He serenaded us with traditional operatic arias and the like as we cruised the Grand Canal and some tiny waterways. Call it schmalizy if you like, but I wouldn’t trade a family experience like this for the world.