Tuesday 17th November 2009 – La Spezia, Italy

Reggio has two market days each week, Tuesday and Friday, so we decided to go this morning with the intention of buying Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. The Tourist Information Office told us yesterday that the market spread over four squares so we had plenty of walking to do. We used the free bus again and headed for the first square by the theatre. This one, we had been told, was clothes and so it turned out to be. Unfortunately, 90% of all the market stalls in all four squares were clothes and it was only in the last square that we found any number of food stalls, mostly fruit and vegetables. There were only three stalls that sold cured meats and cheese and none at all that sold fresh meat. Most surprising given the size of the market but I am sure that Reggio has at least one covered market that has lots of stalls selling meat and cheeses but we didn't have time to find it. We chose one of the two stalls that sold Parmigiano Reggiano and were very impressed by the owner who spoke English and gave us lots of samples of the cheese. We came away with a kilo of very tasty Parmigiano Reggiano that had been matured for 36 months. The owner explained that they were also producers of parma ham but they only sold it in whole legs. By the kilo, this worked out to be very reasonably priced but it would have taken us years to eat it.
The route down to La Spezia was mountainous and beautiful. The Autumn colours lit up the mountainsides with every hue from deep brown to bright yellow. The views were a little misty in the distance and we did hit low cloud as we went over the pass but it was a very pleasant journey. Until we got to La Spezia where we did a tour of the city before we found the aire. The sat nav only had one of the two roads mentioned in the instructions and that road was very long. We went to the wrong part of the road and then spent some time following 'camper services' signs that eventually led us to a motorway service station. We finally tracked down the aire by the port (we knew this but the port goes on for miles) and parked up next to a few other motorhomes.
Photos: One of the lovely views from the road between Reggio and La Spezia.