Rental car to Parma

 This morning was a busy one, starting at about 5:30 am getting ready to disembark. After claiming our luggage and contemplating the distance needed to walk to the rental agency a young employee of the cruise line directed us to the shuttle bus which went to the train station. It  was next to the rental agency. Worked well so we picked up our Peugeot SUV Diesel early. It is a very nice vehicle albeit a bit low slung for us oldsters. After setting the GPS we  headed north on the Italian version of an interstate. Lanes are far narrower than we are used to on the freeway and truck traffic was heavy. And an additional headache are the toll booths. Watching internet videos on how to navigate the toll plazas is a waste of time. There are no attendant manned booths so if your ticket cannot be read by the machine you will pay the maximum toll. 

GPS with useless toll card

Flat coastal land

Yay, mountains are coming up

Europeans love their tunnels

Freeway though the mountains

Tonight we are in the city of Parma. Tomorrow we go on our first cheese tour: ParmaSAN, of course. We had dinner in the dining room at the hotel. It was entertaining people watching. One fellow came in dressed and acting like what we envision the Italian gigolo, or at least that was what he seemed to portray. We also now know to be wary ordering steak in Europe. The poor fellow beside us ordered the rib eye steak, no steak knife and he merrily sawed away at it finally giving up and covering most of it up. Our dinners ( Norma had the chicken, Doug had prosciutto) however, were very good.