After a relaxing 6 hour train journey from Zurich we arrived at Santa Margherita Ligure station and emerged into a wonderful exuberant Italian scene with people talking and laughing loudly accompanied by many, many hand gestures and we smiled to each other as it was impossible to not get swept up into the Italian-ness of it all! A short taxi ride later we were trundling our luggage across the cobblestones of the piazzetta in Portofino. The gelato coloured houses, beautiful yachts and colourful fishing boats together with the chiming of the church bells was like a living breathing postcard and we were even happier once we found our little apartment which was located literally 30 metres from the water! Small but perfectly formed we had everything we needed and immediately felt very relaxed. That night there was only one option for our first dinner in Italy – pizza!!! As expected it was fabulous and we toasted ourselves and our choice to come here, we felt very lucky to be experiencing this little part of the Italian Riviera.

The lane to our apartment led directly off the square and the church above us rang the bells with great gusto (luckily they didn’t begin their hourly peal until 8am!) Every little corner revealed small details of life in Italy and the rich colours made me want to reach for a paintbrush!

Portofino itself is actually tiny (and also eye wateringly expensive with an Aperol costing about 15 euros a pop as opposed to 6-8 everywhere else) so we decided to explore the bigger local town of Santa Margherita with the local 782 bus leaving every half hour and navigating the narrow hairpin bends with ease. The weather was gorgeous – hot and sunny – and we were happy to get off the bus and walk along the coastal path soaking up the shimmery blue water, the colourful umbrellas and if you got a bit hot and bothered you could make use of the little bars that were dotted along the beach. Claiming his knee was playing up the MOTH made the most of the opportunity of course and we spent a lovely hour or two people and yacht watching whilst we sipped on our spritzes! There is plenty to occupy you for a day or two in SM and you can easily visit Portofino for the day or catch a boat further around the coast to Cinque Terra or the Amalfi Coast.

Then home to read, snooze or in my case walk to the hill overlooking Portofino to see its true beauty from above before changing for the evening aperitivo and dinner by the harbour. One evening an opera singer was ‘busking’ and on another there was an outdoor showing of an old black and white Rock Hudson movie in the square. Watching the Passeggiata and the to-ing and fro-ing of the superyachts and their guests was pure entertainment. With boats registered in Madeira, Monaco and other exotic locations it really was a gathering of the rich and famous – Mustique, a 55m yacht with a 1:1 ratio of staff to guests had a film crew aboard following their every move – I’ll keep an eye out for a possible doco on Netflix in the near future! One of the simplest yet most memorable meals from our whole trip was had here – linguine with chilli cherry tomatoes and burrata – something I can try to replicate at home. Somehow it won’t be the same without those bells ringing out though….

So after a lovely last evening eating seafood and sipping on negronis we packed up ready to go to Parma and start our visit to the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy which was going to have to be pretty darn good to come close to matching Portofino…..

Back to the train station we go and as per the last 4 stations there is a lift out of action meaning carting my 21kg suitcase up flights of stairs – (I’m never travelling with more than 15kgs ever again I swear) before we hop on our train to Parma and watch the world going by for about 3 hours as the coast slowly recedes, and we start passing through small towns and farmland. We get into trouble on the train as in Italy face masks are still required on public transport and we didn’t have one on. It seems crazy that you can be mingling cheek by jowl with hundreds of other tourists in a town and then have to mask up on a somewhat empty train???? Anyway we found a couple of crumpled up ones at the bottom of our bag and that seemed to make the Inspector a bit happier despite there being a lot of hand gestures and raised voices before he finally left us alone…..oops!

Arriving in Parma we were whisked off in a cab to the old town where we had booked into a charming B&B called Al Battistero d’Oro tucked away behind heavy wooden doors opposite the Baptistry. Patrizia the delightful owner and hostess extraordinaire greeted us and showed us around her house which I just loved. Huge windows in the sitting room were thrown open to the afternoon sunshine which shone onto the plush lounges and Persian rugs mixed with antiques and family treasures that made the room feel so lovely. Our bedroom was cool and comfortable with shutters that made everything inky black and completely silent at night despite being “in town” and we fell in love with the place on the spot!

Parma is small enough to walk around but big enough to have full days of exploration. We spent our first day looking around some of the amazing buildings including the Pilotta which encompasses several museums and galleries and is well worth spending a good chunk of time in. On the first floor of the Pilotta is the entrance to the Farnese Theatre. It occupies a large room that was originally intended as an armoury. This wooden masterpiece was later transformed into a theatre between 1617 and 1618 by architect Giovan Battista Aleotii.  This room is massive, made solely of wood, and is simply stunning!

It also houses The National Gallery with its fair share of paintings of The Madonna and Child/angelic cherubs and heavenly bodies/crucifixions and portraits of guys in puffy pants and shirred collars but also many other interesting things including a lovely little painting by Leonardo de Vinci circa 1492 “head of a woman” and some HUGE marble statues….Who says size doesn’t matter???

We had plenty of time in Parma to just relax and soak in the local atmosphere and as it is one of THE food towns of Italy we enjoyed all that comes with that title! The delis were like an Aladdin’s Cave packed from floor to ceiling with amazing products and smelling like heaven! Every corner brought new treasures and I’m not sure if we were lucky or unlucky that we couldn’t bring things back to Australia (or risk featuring on the next episode of Border Force!) as we loved nearly everything in the shop! Dinners were spent in laneways lit by candles where we tried local delicacies and one night as we were walking home we came across the unusual sight of one thousand people eating dinner in the street! The Cena dei Mille or dinner of the thousand was a charity dinner to thank the health workers for all they did during Covid and featured the food of three Michelin starred chefs to raise funds for Emporio Solidale Parma – a non for profit organisation to combat increasing poverty in the region and let me tell you it was quite a sight to behold (imagine all the planning, the cooking, the cleaning up and the anxiety over the weather!!!!)

We hopped on the train to Bologna for the day and spent hours wandering around the city checking out the Unilatero with it’s fantastic street stalls of the freshest bounciest food and had a yummy lunch whilst watching the most eclectic people wandering by. It is a huge University town and was quite the place to people watch! It was an interesting city, but I far preferred Parma where you could truly feel the pace and rhythm of the local life and get a sense of what it would be like to live an Italian lifestyle.

Our favourite day was when we decided to do a food tour. We visited local artisan producers of Parmigiano Reggiano, Prosciutto di Parma and Balsamico Tradizionale in Emilia Romagna and the whole day was fantastic. It was so very interesting to hear their stories undertaken with such passion and patience in producing truly local products that have become famous throughout the world! We were the first Aussies back apparently which they thought was special and a sign that life is slowly returning to pre covid conditions at last.

At the Parmigiano Reggiano factory everything is made by hand. Each cheese weighs about 50kg and is made within an hour or two of the cows being milked. It is a very physical job and must be done every day. The ONLY added ingredient is salt and then they are aged on the shelves of the cheese rooms where they are stamped with the information telling when and where the milk came from and then they are all individually turned every few days and washed and salted fortnightly until they are ready to go out into the world as one of the most beloved cheeses in the world – parmigiano!

Once the hind legs of the local pigs have been trimmed into the familiar shape they are stamped with the name and date of the producer and they begin the drying process in a cold-room. The next drying stage is in a slightly warmer room where in summer they open all the windows for the sea breeze to enhance the characteristics of the prosciutto. A special paste of pork fat, salt and pepper is rubbed in thoroughly all over the leg which helps to seal the flavour in and the bugs out! They are finally hung to age until ready for consumption – anything between 12 and 36 months for prosciutto di Parma.

We thought the balsamic producer would be the most boring but it was actually fascinating! The balsamic we know from supermarket shelves is an industrial version of the nectar that is Balsamico Traditzionale. It is luxuriously sweet and thick in texture, with a color that approaches ebony black. Its bouquet is one of the most intense imaginable and its concentration is so intense that just a few drops can transform a dish.

Balsamico Tradizionale is produced in and around two cities of Emilia-Romagna: Modena and Reggio-Emilia. It differs from nearly all other vinegars in that it is not made from wine or another fermented juice; it is made according to an ancient local recipe, from the juice of fresh, crushed grapes cooked down to a fraction of its original volume. It then starts its life of ageing in old wine barrels where the yeast absorbed in the wood helps the fermentation process. They are then transferred into a series of smaller barrels made of different woods which impart different flavours – oak, chestnut, acacia, ash, cherry, mulberry and juniper. It is finally aged in small casks for at least 12 years—and often for 25 to 30 years or more. It is an incredibly costly process, requiring a half ton of grapes to produce a gallon of 25-year-old Balsamico. It is no wonder that this amazing product commands huge money, luckily one small bottle can last you a very long time!

So after a fabulous 5 days of eating drinking and exploring we bid Patrizia a fond farewell and we were off to Verona…..