Never Quite Home Alone

View from the balcony

I was originally planning to go to Vienna the weekend of March 1st with some other BC girls. When I waited too long to buy my plane ticket and realized how expensive the travel and whole weekend would be, I decided to save money and stay in Parma for the weekend. But that meant I would be the only one of my four apartment-mates who would be staying here.

Fortunately, Nice also counts as an apartment-mate and she's always seeking to make sure we're all happy and having fun. After a nice passeggiata (walk) with Nice on Friday afternoon, she made dinner for the two of us and we went to bed early. She was taking me to see her friends in "the mountains" (Dolomites) for the next two days! She drove three hours to a little village called Monclassico located in the Val di Sole (Valley of the Sun) where the sun basically always shines.


This trip was breathtaking. Parma is by no means a dirty city, but it was so obvious how fresh and clean the air was in the mountains. We had a picnic on her friends' balcony when we first arrived, and then they drove us to Madonna di Campiglio one day and the opposite side of the mountains another. I understand why this is a tourist attraction for skiers. Most of what I experienced was sharing meals with these three wonderful people and bonding time with Nice and getting to know her better. This was a lot of fun and made our adventure home along the beautiful Lago di Garda and through the miniature roads her TomTom guided us to more interesting. (I also very much appreciated how she named her TomTom "Chiara." I think Chiara and my TomTom Susan would get along since their owners do so well!)