Back in Modena, we really wanted to go to one of the farms where they make the balsamic vinegar and Parmesan cheese, but we were unable to find any tours that didn’t require an advance reservation. Worse, all that I found only took reservations via email, not through their website. Real dumb.

I had hoped once we arrived in Parma, we could find someone to help, but alas no.

We arrived in Parma and found the hostel quite easily. We went up, used the key code that I got in the confirmation and went into our room. We sat there for a while, waiting for the owner, before I noticed there was luggage in the cabinet. We were actually there prior to check out time, and the previous guests had not yet left. Oops.

We decided to take a walk down the road a bit, but didn’t see anything more than we had already seen in other towns, so we drove around bypassing the ZTL, the no-go zone, to the star-shaped area on our map marked as the Citadel. I don’t know if it used to be a citadel or not, but now it is a park, all be it very heavily fortified park. This was the first place that we had seen freshly mown grass. Everywhere else seems to be on the “wild flower” track, or they are just too lazy to cut the weeds.

We grabbed some food and went back to the room to eat. The owner didn’t show up until after 6pm, check in was at 1pm. She took my money, gave me a reciept, then was gone. No info, no rules, no help, nothing. She didn’t even speak English at all. I don’t think that opening your place up to strangers is a good idea if you can’t help them out with any information and won’t even be around.

There really was nothing in Parma that was all that interesting. We were certainly tired of seeing churches. I didn’t take a photo all day. Between that and not finding any food tours, this has been a boring city.