And now a road trip to Parma. First, I should mention that we couldn’t plug our GPS into the car. Not because of the lighter, but because without the mount, the power plug won’t go into the GPS directly. Huge flaw there, Garmin! So we could use it, but we had to be cautious not to drain the battery.

There are two routes we could have taken to Parma, the straight route through the middle of Italy or to the east along the coast. We opted for the more scenic route, estimated to take about 5.5 to 6 hours. At the half way point we stopped in Ancona, a non-touristy port town, for lunch at La Moretta. They’re known for their traditional dishes, most of which involve seafood. Lunch was pretty good, but brief.

Remember how I said our driver from the airport to the apartment was crazy? Well, its not just him. As it turns out, Italy is full of crazy drivers. They speed as if the limit doesn’t exist, and they get very impatient if you don’t move to the right soon enough. Often times they’ll ride just a little over the line into the lane next to them (either side). Luckily they don’t really do that when someone is next to them (that I’ve seen anyway). It is nice though that people would rarely just sit in the left lane, even I get annoyed with that in the States.

The B&B, Cancabaia, was a little hard to locate. Both the GPS and Google maps couldn’t exactly pinpoint it. The fact that it was in the middle of the country with no lights didn’t help. In the end we must have driven past it about three times, but we did eventually find it and were greeted by two cute farm doggies and our hosts, Simona and Bruno. The first thing I noticed was the strong stench of manure. We were staying on a Parmasen farm after all, I should have expected it!

We got settled in and then figured out where to eat. Simona and Bruno suggested a nice local place, Trattoria Capelli. The food was phenomenal, as was the service. We expected to complete the encounter with gestures, but our waiter spoke some English and went out of his way to relate the menu to us. The pasta was so good, I was so full (pictured above), I still can’t get over it! After our fantastic meal we fell asleep pretty fast on the nice soft beds, such wonderful juxtaposition to our Roman beds.