Parking and Riding in Reggio Emilia

Zagan the motorhome is in the rapidly-emptying park and ride just outside Reggio Emilia (N44.70981, E10.62387). Joining him is an international array of vehicles; motorhomes from Croatia, Germany, Italy and a bus from Ukraine. As we’re a couple of kilometres from the centre of Reggio Emilia, the council have kindly provided a free bus service into town, if you can work out how to use it – TIP: Before you park, drive up next to the ticket machine and press the button to get your free ticket for the bus.

Ticket machine on left but you need the weight of a car to activate it

This morning, after long, hot showers, we made sure everything was fully charged before we unhooked the lovely electricity supply. Our final task, to make sure we made the most of our €15 a night, was to use the service point. It doubles as a van wash too, so out came the sponge and Zagan got some of his dirt rubbed around a bit.

We had originally planned to go to Sabbioneta which is a joint UNESCO world heritage site with Mandova, but we were both feeling a bit Italian citied out. Parma was next on our plan but after looking into parking possibilities it went by the wayside too – I guess our formula for visiting places must be:

(Want to see something – What we’ve seen recently) / (Ease of parking x Distance)

Although I guess using that formula we probably shouldn’t be here either, as there wasn’t anything we particularly wanted to see. We’ve seen a lot of similar stuff recently, but the ease and distance was right, so here we are. The drive was mainly flat fields, with either bare earth or very young crops, along with an absurd amount of roundabouts. Reaching the parking we both hesitated a little, as did a couple of other motorhomers who drove in and drove out again. But we figured we’re next to the police station, we’re away from the road, urban Italy often looks bad and we have stopped in much worse places.

After lunch in the van we headed off on the free mini-bus (once we’d worked out how to get a ticket). We jumped off at what felt like close to the centre, and next to something we’d be able to find again – a large obelisk. After wandering around the streets using a photograph on my phone of a street map of the city that was in our atlas, we finally found the main square, strewn with rubbish and the last couple of market stalls packing up. We knew it was market day, but we didn’t rush in as we only saw a market yesterday in Mantova.

Post market clean up outside the Duomo

We wandered around until the tourist office re-opened. There was bound to be some interesting stuff, as this is the place that the Tricolor flag was created in 1796 and adopted by the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, but alas it was closed.

We think this is where the Tricolor was created!

There was only one thing for it – gelato time. Jay didn’t fancy one so I nipped in on my own and this lovely lady talked me through each of the flavours, letting me sample several. I opted for a cone of two of the house specialities; something with a liqueur in and something with chocolate, biscuits and cherries in. The lady did look a tad concerned at my combo but smiled and piled it on anyway, topping it off with some squirty cream and a wafer – and it was still €2.

Another church and a great ice cream

After scoffing/sharing my ice cream, places were still closed (we’re still out of sync with Italian long lunches), so we wandered back towards the bus stop doing a bit of window shopping as we went. Our guide book tells us this is an expensive part of Italy and looking at the price of stuff, I wholly agree with it.

No idea what this is. it looks like medicine but was in a souvenir shop

Back at Zagan we had a cuppa before heading across the road to the supermarket to buy some local delicacies and a few essentials. We had a good wander around gawping at foreign food – I do love a supermarket. From the easter eggs and aisles of pasta to the ‘almost’ Parma ham. Parma is just up the road from here, but Parma has wasn’t cheap, so we got stuff from the town next door. The queues for the tills were massive so we braved the self-service checkout, which fortunately asks you what language you want (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that in the UK!). Even with it speaking our own language we still managed to get the red light several times, but then so did others using them. It seems you can’t scan and bag, you have to scan, pay then bag – then don’t forget you need your receipt to get out of the self-scan area.

After all that excitement we’re (hopefully) having a quiet night in our car park. Jay is rustling up a Friday night treat – beefburger, chips and beans (can you tell we walked past a burger steak house earlier?). Then we’ll be using our formula to work out where to go next. We tried to book into the Ducati museum and factory for a tour, but it’s full for the next few days, so we’ll have to work out a plan B. Watch this space and have a great weekend.

Ju x