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A Week in Reggio Emilia

jan

100+ Posts
Reggio Emilia—2018

Reggio Emilia is decidedly not spiffed up for tourists.

And though I hate to use the word, it seems more “authentic.” While there, we heard no English and saw few tourists. It was a good place to shop and cook, a good place to practice my Italian, had good train connections. It was just what I wanted.

Day trip to Modena:

We visited Modena on two prior trips, primarily to browse in the Albinelli market, my all time favorite. Each time we visited, I said “I would love to have the time to cook from the Albinelli’s amazing array of fresh cheeses, meats, fish, and produce,”which is exactly what we finally did. The third time was the charm! Getting out of our apartment by 10:00ish wasn’t too difficult. But there was an open market right down the street and in Piazza Fontanesi so we wandered through there. The produce was uninspiring, as were the tons of clothes that were being hocked. I was a little chilly, so we bought some nice organic eggs and took them back to the apartment to get a warmer sweater and scarf. And we took off again to catch the train to Modena. The ride was 16 minutes.

We walked through the park in Modena admiring the horse chestnut trees on our way to Mercato Albinelli. After great deliberation, and knowing that we would have to carry our bags back to the train, we selected some perfectly lovely, large, homemade tortelloni: gorgeous puffs of local sheeps milk ricotta and spinach in egg pasta. The pasta lady told us 7 or 8 each would be the proper portion, so we bought 16.

Lunch at the Bar Schiavino in the market was and is a must. We ordered two cottechino sandwiches and two glasses of dry Lambrusco and had ourselves an al fresco feast. Really wonderful.

After lunch, we strolled around Modena some more, through the Piazza Grande and in the direction of the train station where we saw a really interesting modern Trojan Horse sculpture.

Before dinner, we took another walk around Reggio Emilia, but did not really know one landmark from another, except the Piazza Fontanesi. Got to study up! There was an extensive photo show scattered in a number of stores/makeshift galleries around town. We enjoyed a few of the displays.

Came home excited to cook the pasta and warm some already cooked chard. I also melted the tomatoes in butter with just salt and pepper, and a little pasta water, to create the sauce. Freshly grated parmigiano reggiano finished it off. So, so delicious. Success!

Day 3: The day started off great. We went to a really nice, bio/organic market right near us in Piazza Fontanesi. It had it’s own gentle rhythm and beautiful products. I regret not buying anything.

As we walked around town, we realized that each piazza had its own market—one with clothes, one with household goods, and one with crafts. I found a handpainted scarf that I loved, but didn’t part with the euros for it.

We stopped at a busy store, Panificio Melli, to buy some prosciutto, bread, vinegar, a few sweets and a half bottle of what turned out to be a delicious lambrusco. We returned home for a nice little picnic in our apartment. This was our first local prosciutto (Prosciutto di Parma). It was noticably different than the Tuscan variety; softer and less assertive, but equally delicious.

After naptime (wine at lunch will do that) we set off for this parmigiano reggiano “open dairies” event I had seen online. I imagined it would be like a fair. The walk was about 45 minutes heading out of town to the west. We walked through some nice parts of town, commercial and residential, but for a good while in an industrial zone—not too pretty. And finally we found the event. It was, well,…”dinky.” There was little happening, with the exception of a fire in a large copper pot housed in a brick structure where cheese was being made the old fashioned way. One young guy had to keep feeding the fire while another brought him bundles of sticks. Two older gentleman were at the top of the pot, one stirring and another checking temperature and consistency. Finally it came up to the desired 45° C and they threw water on the fire which created so much smoke that everyone ran out of the building.

At that point Ken, who had long since had enough of the heat from the fire, pointed up to the sky which was really looking threatening. We decided to walk back. Kinda disappointing.

We heard some thunder, but never got more than a sprinkle on the walk.

By the time we got home, we were really tired so we just ate stuff we had in the apartment and chalked it up to a great exercise day but not such great tourism.

Day 4: We got out in a leisurely fashion, to further explore Reggio. And, of course, get food. First destination was a small gastronomia, a shop where they sell prepared foods which you generally have to reheat, but no other cooking required. I have come to love these shops in Italy. It’s Sunday and we saw people all day walking with wrapped cakes and bags of food. Family day? Anyway, the little shop proved to be so much fun! We talked a lot with the owner as she explained the various dishes, how to reheat them, and what went with what. We bought a bunch of stuff and took it home right away. Just in time to put our laundry out to dry on the rack on our little terrace.

We had dinner covered, but we knew we wanted to go back to Melliw where we had purhased the prosciutto before. First, we wanted to go on a nice long explore. This centro/center is really quite small, so we walked to the north where there was a big modern-looking piazza with a theater at one end.

Behind the theater was a nice park where we sat for a while. We saw a poignant World War II memorial. I always feel a real heaviness in my heart when I see the inscribed names of the deceased, and get that the horrors and reality of the fighting and dying took place where I’m sitting.

All around town we saw small photo exhibits, which added an appreciated dimension to the trip.

Walking back, we bought our lunch: breads, prosciutto, and culatello, another kind of cured pork. Also got “erbazzone,” a spinach and parmigiano stuffed crusty pie. Wow! I loved that!

After lunch and a nice rest period, we went for a pre-dinner walk. We walked to the duomo and went in for a visit.

We couldn’t find any stores open to buy wine, so we went back to our friend in the gastronomia. She sold us 2 bottles for less than €10 and we talked to her for a long time. Guess what–she thinks Trump is crazy too.

Love these kind of days!

Day Trip to Parma:

Ever since we spent 5 days in Parma in 2006, I’ve wanted to return. Just a short train ride from Reggio to the northwest; it has a totally different feel and color scheme. We walked to the train station, bought the tickets from the machine and hopped on. First stop, after about 15 minutes, is Parma.

We had lots of memories and knew exactly how to walk from the station to the center. There are lots of new stores and franchises, but still I saw a couple of hat shops and small men’s suit shops.

The town was quite crowded with Italian tourists because this a long weekend, with Tuesday being Labor day, a national holiday. Many people “fare il ponte”/make the bridge and take off Monday too. I think this making of the bridge is a universal. We talked with travelers from Genoa and from Milan. The famous octagonal Baptistry is partially under scaffolding with an explanatory sign. Some of the rock pillars are crumbling and the repair situation is noted on the building as “urgent.” Piazza Garibaldi looks about the same, but just across the street under the porticos there are now big franchise department stores–like OVS and H&M.

Piazza del Pace is totally fenced and covered for repairs. Still, Parma is clean and bright with its lovely pastel pallette.

Despite the long wait for a table at 1:00 p.m, we had a nice lunch at the well known Trattoria Tribunale. We each got a pasta dish and shared a secondo. Mine was a mix of 3 kinds of tortelli/ravioli, pumpkin, ricotta and spinach with ricotta. All wonderful. Kenny’s pasta was beautiful eggy tagliolini with a bit of ham, zucchini and saffron sauce, the best dish of the day. We also shared punta di vitello ripiena/stuffed veal. It turned out to be almost all stuffing and we didn’t love it.

On our way back from the restaurant to the train, we stopped for a coffee and to buy some dinner supplies in the gastronomia there. Easy going back on the train and called it a day.

Rest of the week:

Somehow I came down with a 24 hour viral thing that forced me into bed for a day. The beauty of staying for somewhere for a full week is that there is no panic about lost time when real life interferes. Plus, it rained all day.

The next day I was really low energy so we just read and hung out in the apartment.

The week in Reggio Emilia was really satisfying. It gave us a break from hard core sight seeing and a moment to “live” in a sweet town.
 
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