Day 17, Parma

We're just part way through the day, but I'm afraid my internet access will run out before we get back from the opera tonight, so the Traviata report will have to wait until a future post.

Today was our first day of bad weather. Rain all day. Gramma got up early, hoping that we'd join the tour of the Toscanini museum and other sights around Parma, but decided against it with the inhospitable weather. So we just met up with the group at the restaurant for lunch. Lunch: that three-hour feast that stands in for all three meals of a regular day. Oh my my my, it was incredible again. The most notable part was the fresh mushrooms in a garlic cream sauce surrounding a mound of pureed pumpkin... Holy cats! (As Judy, another opera fan on our tour, would say.)

After lunch, Gramma and the others took taxis back to the hotel, and Judy and I were able to get away for a while to do some shopping. She took me into this little perfume shop--the kind of place I would never think to go into--and it was really fun! It was just the two of us and the nice woman who ran the place. She and Judy were talking about all the different perfumes, where they come from, what kinds of occasions they're good for, comparing this to that. It was a real experience for me! We were sniffing all these little strips of paper with perfumes spritzed on them, and then "cleansing our palettes" by sticking our noses in a jar of coffee beans she kept under the counter. When Judy finally made her decision to buy a bottle of perfume (a local specialty) and a stick of deodorant, the lady wrapped them all up in these fancy packages with ribbons and bows and everything. And then she gave us free samples of some of the stuff we liked. It was actually pretty neat to go in there and consider all these different smells from all these different places, all bottled up and sold at extraordinary prices. Like I said, a completely new experience for me, but something I'll probably remember for a long time! My favorite aspect of this trip are the cultural encounters. But they all have less to do with American/Italian cultural differences, and more to do with lower/upper class cultural differences. When these people start talking about their fancy designer purses and shoes, and all the five star hotels they've stayed in, I really start to feel like a peasant! But a truly fortunate peasant. I don't have many expensive material things (say, a couch), and probably never will (ok, maybe someday a couch), but I have all I need to be happy-- including occasional opportunities to cross the boundaries of my own world into another. Gramma has been a great catalyst for that kind of thing, in many ways!