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Published: June 19th 2017
DAY 7 - Wednesday John felt guilty about skipping school so he went to school with the students. The focus this day was a tasting lecture, including traditional Italian cheeses, cured meats and wine. Nothing new for Cook Street students but hearing it all from a different voice in a fantastic place always puts new life into a subject. The tasting examples where amazing, especially the lardo; pork fat cured in spices and local salt. John has made this at the school, but here in this environment it seems to have more sex appeal. Marleah spent the morning sleeping in, lounging around the room, taking a bath and then around 1:00 walked down to the Barilla Center to meet John for lunch. It's about a 15 minute walk, the sun is shining but the wind is blowing cold so your body temperature is always hot and cold at the same time. It makes the walk seem much longer.
A quick stop at H&M to buy sweats (and a dress, because dress!), it's pretty chilly here and warmer pajamas are needed. The government regulates when people can turn on their heaters for the winter which is some time in the late fall.
It's kinda great because it's to keep the environment cleaner but since the hotel can't turn on the heat that means our room is super cold, hence all the warm-up baths and the new sweats.
The students were finishing up their day so we hung out with some of them for a bit, chatting and eating watermelon. And that watermelon tasted so good, it actually had color and flavor unlike the stuff we get here. For lunch we went to an American Steakhouse in the same shopping center as Barilla. Since Marleah can't have gluten at home we ordered a bunch of appetizers she normally wouldn't get to eat like onion rings and mozzarella sticks, they were delicious. The burgers we ordered were not delicious. It's always weird to get basic American food in other countries, they really just make strange decisions (bread choices, baking the meat, odd condiments) and it comes out so kooky!
Another grocery stop for more snacks and water before heading back to the hotel.
We've been here for a week, went through a bunch of clothes already and so we should probably do some laundry.The guy at the front desk gave us directions to two
places. We walked to one and couldn't find it so we walked in the opposite direction, to the other side of the city and couldn't find that one either. We were very frustrated and completely exhausted. Ironically, we asked a woman at a dry cleaner for directions. She sent us another handful of blocks to a different laundromat. We thought we were only going to be gone for about an hour, it took us three.
The walk back was much quicker, but still a frustrating adventure.
We were so tired and worn out that we didn't want to go out to find dinner. We ate chips in bed.
DAY 8 - Thursday John took the day off from Barilla again. There are a couple things we researched before we left that we really wanted to see.
On the side of San Giovanni Evangelista (Saint John Church) there is an old pharmacy (Antica Spezieria di San Giovanni) that dates back to 1201. Initially set up by the Benedictine monks for their own use, they eventually extended their care to the many pilgrims passing through. Then it was taken over by a citizen and completely opened up to the public. It
was passed down through that family until the early 1900s when it was donated back to the care of the church. What an AMAZING place, it's filled with 250 ceramic vases, apothecary jars, stills and glass instruments. There are ancient mortar and pestles and botanical books on herbs and medicines. It's a wonderful, gorgeous place and even though it's very small we spent a long time in there. There are three rooms, the Room of Fire (Sala del Fuoco) which has the fireplace and a large sales counter, 19th century scales and weights and shelves of earthenware pots. The Mortar Room (Sala dei Mortai) has the massive mortar and pestles used for grinding herbs and minerals and the preparation of medicines. This room also has many 17th century wood carved shelves lined with porcelain jars in many different shapes that held aromatic essences, ointments, spices and roots. The lunettes are painted frescoes of the masters of medicine. The Room of Sirens (Sala delle Sirene) has effigies of Sirens carved into the wood and the shelves surrounding the room are filled with old books of pharmacopoeia, medicine and botany. The lunettes of this room have paintings of the leading physicians of
Parma. Adjacent to the Fire Room is the old laboratory that was restored in 1996. It has pink marble sinks from the 16th century, a well, stills and glass vessels for preparing medicines. You can see the marks on the walls from the fumes and writing from the 19th century above the door that used to lead to the cellar. There used to be a "poisons" room off the Fire Room but it doesn't exist anymore, the door is there but there's nothing behind it. Too bad!
It was hard to leave, if we had more free time on this trip I think we would have gone back for another look-see!
Next we went to the Convent of San Paolo to see a fresco in the private room of Abbess Giovanna Piacenza. In 1519 she commissioned Antonio Correggio to paint the room which is called the Camera di San Paolo. The painting on the front of the fireplace is of Diana, goddess of the hunt and the domed ceiling is covered in images from mythology; fauns and the Three Fates - another surprising piece of art in Parma that isn't religious. It is said the painting of Diana refers to
the Abbess and her battle at the time with civil and religious authorities that were intent on curtailing the intellectual and social freedom of the convents. Opression and protest, often through indirect means, are constant features in Italian art. As we walked around the city that day, we were struck by frequent use of yellow on many of the buildings. It's a very warm but slightly muted golden color that always gives the houses a timeless sort of aristocratic feeling and a permanent golden glow. Parma yellow became the popular color to paint buildings and houses during the Bourbon Era because it emulates the gold of the royal court.
Dinner that evening was in Modena, about 45 minutes by train. Our companions were Christa and Lucien, a really nice young student of John's who won a coin flip for the chance to join us. Our destination was Osteria Francescana, currently the number 2 restaurant in the world. The World! Christa had made the reservation months ago and was nice enough to include us. The chef is Massimo Battura, famous for modern reinterpretations of classic dishes from this region. He's also famous for his Chef's Table TV episode and for
dropping a lemon tart on the floor and turning into his signature dish. It's actually called "Oops! I dropped the lemon tart". When we first arrived we were all very nervous and quite uncomfortable. It's such a high end place and extremely small, only 6 tables, it makes you feel like there's a spotlight on you. After settling in and realizing that if we just relaxed, enjoying eachothers company we could have fun and not be nervous anymore. In all Italian restaurants they make sure to seat the woman first, hand her the menu first, serve her first. Old fashioned manners still in practice and definitely something we aren't used to being exercised in such a large way. When we sat down to dinner at Osteria Francescana and handed the menu, Christa and Marleah thought the prices weren't listed because it was so expensive and you had to ask for prices. We discovered that John and Lucien had the prices on their menus, the man pays for dinner! Marleah's inner riot grrl feminist was getting ready for a fight. The meal was quite an experience, not really for the food (hit or miss) but for the service, the artistry and
the amusing seriousness of the whole event. We made it through the 12 or so courses and the tableside chat with Chef Massimo, followed by a private tour of the kitchen. He talked a lot about himself, went on for a while about cheese, let us take pictures with him and his whole kitchen staff and then he gifted us with some balsamic vinegar and parmigiano cheese. Quite an honor, but it seemed choreographed and as if we won the daily lottery for "the tour at the end of the night". Still, quite a memorable experience.
DAY 9 - Friday Today is our first group tour day, we met at our bus at 8:30am. As usual, some of the students took the meeting time to be a suggested time so we had to wait for them to stumble onto the bus at 9am. This put us behind for the whole day and created a bit of bad blood brewing with the rest of us. John feels responsible but as these are "adults", there isn't much to be done. The tour is led by Melanie who did the walking tour and she's fantastic as always. We spend the next 9
hours changing in and out of work coats, shoe covers and hair nets as we get a private tour of a Parmigiano Reggiano factory, a Prosciutto di Parma producer who doesn't ship to the states, a well preserved medieval castle and a quirky, picturesque local wine producer. Seeing the cheese and prosciutto from start to finish, the aroma of the curing rooms and the focus on slow traditions was really amazing and memorable. The castle tour was fascinating. Not the castle itself (you've seen one, you've seen 'em all) but the varied styles of murals - some primitive, some spectacular, all really gorgeous. We particularly enjoyed the Art Grotesque rooms, something we aren't all that familiar with. Lunch at the castle was nice, but we are tiring quickly of the group dynamics, the cliques and back-biting that is in full effect. The group is large (18) and some amount of this is inevitable, but factions are developing after so much time together and it's really annoying. The winery was beautiful and the wine maker was a great guy, humble and engaging. It was a great way to end the day. The day would have ended two hours earlier, but one
faction, the "drinky-show up late to everything-don't leave until forced to-no respect for anyone else's time" gang, prevented us from leaving because they just had to buy several cases of wine. Wine that they can't take home. Wine they will consume in the hotel lobby every day and night while holding everyone who passes by captive with pointless, hollow conversation. There's also a constantly discussed weekend trip to Cinque Terre happening the next day involving about half of the group. It will be good for everyone to spend a weekend apart.
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