Express By Holiday Inn Reggio Emilia

... that I understand. My Italian recgonition has improved slightly this weekend, which gives me an edge they do not have. Its like peices of a puzzel, and they are missing the picture to match to another peice, that important piece that links the different sections together. Where I can just try and find one. it is always out of their grasp..... But alas, I did sit, a lot, and made attempts to smile when people gave me little looks of 'aw pity she doesn ...

Day 2: Modena

This turned out to be a very long day. Thanks to the time (Local time is nine hours earlier than PST) change, we awoke at 0300. We both read our books until it was time for breakfast.

Breakfast was included at the hotel and was buffet style. I ate some granola with cream, yogurt, and a delicious scone with fruit in it and some fabulous coffee.

We walked around Milano for about an ...

... snack lunch and sat down in a piazza to eat. There were pigeons everywhere and we once again asked eachother why the hell there were so many school kids all over the place. School ends around one o clock but they go on Saturdays too. We finished lunch and wandered a bit before we made it to the office. We started looking for information on checking out the regions specialties - proscuitto and ...

... environment is more of a brand new hospital than any sort of factory one could imagine. The place has its own foundry, which produces the aluminum and the steel for the engines and the chassis. The robots and computer programing of such resembles more of a military defense base. The technology advancements for this company have been bountiful. We were lucky to tour the new production line / building now in ...

We started the morning with a visit to Conad (their local grocery store) we bought some French bread, cheese and prosciutto for our lunch. We then drove the back roads to neighboring Moglia, nuvi Modena, then Carpi where we stopped and walked around and saw the largest Piazza de Martiri which has a 16C renaissance cathedral overlooking it. We have found that it is rather easy to find the town center in these ...

... and did a little shopping. On our way out of Parma we stopped at an Ikea yippee! (Where I accidentally set off an alarm by going out of the wrong door). We spent the evening at the apartment and said goodbye to Lorelei and Arthur. As a side note not sure if I mentioned this earlier you might want to ask David how the womens restrooms are in Verona and Parma haha

... during the Roman era. When Rome tubed in the 5th century, so did the rest of Italy, including Reggio Emilia. The area suffered through invasions, looting and worse by Northern Barbarians, Northeastern Ostrogoths, and neighboring city-states, evetually finding peace and safety under the rule of the Lombards, (French, "Long Beards") who spatted with the Pope over who owned what. All the while Reggio Emilia worked on its own identity and defenses as a place ...

... same one I had used four years prior), but also a whole apartment for my own. The fridge was empty, mind you. The latter sentence didn't really matter too much, as Lino (the father), insisted that I come and go as I please from their house, to my new house, to wherever I wanted, eat whenever and whatever I wanted, and of course drink whenever and whatever I wanted. And so goes life... Through these days in Reggio, I spent a lot of time with the boys and other ex ...

... area, and how the duration spent in each section was driven more by how long we were interested in staying rather than a pre-determined timetable. The only rule was that we weren’t to touch anything. I’m sure the workers hate it though, with these nosey visitors having so much freedom to get in their way while they’re trying to work.

With the Research and Development and Formula One sections strictly off-limits, the first stop after a ...

... for dinner. It’s a beautiful spa town and smells good! I took a long walk through the park and had a Gran Marnier on the patio. Peggy had Amaretto which pleased the bartender/host. He didn’t like my ordering a French liqueur! The hotel was one of the nicest on our tour.

We left our window open and it was actually cold when we got up!