European Dreaming: Day 9 2 fat foodies in food heaven

We are a day ahead of schedule and after leaving the campground we try to find a Balsamic Vinegar House that I had reservations for the following day. After driving around for 30 minutes and finally on tiny roads Mark isn't happy about we decide to give up and head over to Parma the next stop of our trip. A dissapointment since Balsamic Vinegar is why we drove to Modena.

On the 45 minute drive to Parma we stop at an Autogrill (think truck stop) outside of Modena to get our morning pastry and the espresso that I will soon become addicted to. We quickly learn that the food at the autogrill is very good, better than any American fast food restaurant. After a quick stop we are off to Parma Italy and it's Parmigiano Reggiono cheese and Prosciutto Ham. Being a day ahead we figure we'll just stay the night at a campground in Parma so we select one as a POI on Tom Tom and shortly arrive at the address indicated to find ourselves amongst a bunch of apartments with no campground in sight. Sighs. So with a mission to find a parking spot for the RV we drive around.......and around.......and around.......and around. After driving around in the pedestrian heavy town for an hour and half we just call it quits and head the 15 minutes to Torrechiara Castle. Dissappointed yet again that we won't be visiting any specialty food stores.

Once parked at the bottom of the castle in the parking lot I step outside of the RV as a tour bus of German high school students pull up. After they all get off I try to speak with the bus driver to find out if he knows where bus parking is in Parma. Though I don't speak much of his German and he doesn't speak English he gets a map out and shows me what he thinks may be parking but isn't sure since he's not done it. Mark and I tread up to the castle admiring the amazing views on the way up. The castle has a restaurant that I had wanted to have dinner at so we settled for a nice lunch instead. This is where we got redemption for missing all of the specialty foods that we had travelled to the area for. We had an incredible lunch at the castle that gave us everything we were looking to try. This is another one of those things that ended up turning out better then we originally planned. God does work in miraculous ways as we find out again later when we arrive in Levanto. When we write up the review of it on the 2fatfoodies blog I'll post a link here.

Torrechiara Castello

Lunch at the castle

Local Wine

Foods of the area Prosciutto Ham and 24 mo. aged Parmigiano Reggiano cheese with 18 yr old Balsamic vinegar

While having our wonderful lunch we debated our many choices to camp for the evening. When Mark discovered that we were just 2 hours from the Mediterranean coast of Italy he was done drinking wine and ready for the drive. What a shame that I was stuck drinking the last of the bottle of wine, you don't really believe that I was upset about it do you?

More ruins

About an hour into our drive it started raining off and on until we hit the little winding road that goes from the motorway down to Levanto then the heavens let loose. This would be a difficult drive in an RV in normal conditions but with the rain it was even worse. These roads were more windy and of course more narrow then any roads in the Alps.

White knuckling it down to Levanto in the pouring rain

As soon as we hit the coast in Levanto the rain stopped and the sun was shining on the Mediterranean. Want to talk about an AAAAAAA moment (picture angels singing). As I waited my turn to check into the campground I stood under a tree that dropped the occasional drop around or on me and with the view of the moon coming up over the hills (see picture below) I realized that we have arrived at a great location. We decide to stay at least 3 nights here and later on spread it out to a 4'th since we loved it here so much. If there wasn't so much more to see of Southern France we may have stayed here until we had to return the RV. After parking the RV and getting Marks nerves calmed down (can't remember if it was a beer or wine that did the trick) we walk the 3 minutes to the shore and watch the sunset over it. We then return to the campground restaurant for their highly acclaimed pizza and a bottle of their local red wine. The pizza wasn't anything to write home about but the wine was pretty good.

Our view from the camper