I made a big discovery a few week-ends ago :) This post is both a travel report and a "J'aimerai" chronicle, as I discovered the mounts and valleys of the Appenine Emiliane and note to myself, would love to go back!
- The Apennines are a mountain range consisting of parallel smaller chains extending c. 1,200 km (750 mi) along the length of peninsular Italy. In the northwest they join with the Ligurian Alps at Altare. In the southwest they end at Reggio di Calabria, the coastal city at the tip of the peninsula. Highest point is Il Gran Sasso d'Italia (cit wikipedia).
- Emilia, from the name of the region of Emilia Romagna, capital Bologna. One of the richest in Italy center of the automotive industry (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Ducati..) and food (Barilla…) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilia-Romagna
As usual we had a rough plan, something like, we would like to avoid the rain, go to the countryside and have a quiet time, possibly walking a little as well. We didn't really know where we were going and had no idea were to stay overnight. Then we found out that there were some hostels for 15eur a night. Therefore we headed from Parma to Costa mezzana a small village on the hill on Friday night. Getting the keys of that hostel room was like a mafia scenario. The village was so big it had only a single bar and a church. We were told to arrive after 21.30 because as we got to understand later, that night there was a special service for the Virgin Mary (May 31st is visitation day) and the religious ladies were attending the "rosario" in some other place. So it was dark, windy, on the top of a hill, only 2 streets in this village. Finally a mythical Pandino (Fiat Panda) arrived and stopped right in front of the bar. Our landlady had arrived, some kind of very animated older widow lady. I had to bite my lip in order not to laugh when she took note of all our ID details :) Then we discovered why there was an hostel in such a random place… We were on Pilgrim way… the Pilgrim way from Canterbury to Rome called Via Franciscena. Over the next days we moved then more inland from Costamezzana, Fornovo di Taro (along the river), and then the historic way (SS62) crossing from Parma to La Spezia on the Mediterranean sea and stopping for a second night at the hostel of Cassio.
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| Costa Mezzana- Village |
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| Costa Mezzana - our first hostel |
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| Poppies!!!! everywhere |
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| from Cassio |
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| Cassio |
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| Viola - on the road from Cassio to Solignano |
links: http://www.viefrancigene.org/fr/resource/tour/francigena/
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