Parma

After four days in Paris, I packed up and headed to Parma, Italy.

I consider Parma – a small city in the Emilia-Romagna region best known for its production of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and Prosciutto di Parma – my second home.  My junior year of university, I studied there for a semester.  I’d opted to live in a homestay with an Italian family and was placed with Marco and Paola, a Parmigiano couple who do not have children of their own but who have hosted multiple Boston College students over the years.  I couldn’t have asked for a more amazing experience.  They are incredibly special people, and over the past six years, they have become two of the most important people in my life.  I love them like my second set of parents.

And I love Parma itself.  The city is small but very affluent, with plenty of windy little streets and colored buildings and cobblestones and unbelievably charming nooks and crannies. Biking is one of the primary ways Parmigiani get around, and the city is small enough that you can get almost anywhere on foot.  Parma was where I first fell in love with Italy, and it will always feel like home. During the year I spent in Firenze, it was so nice to know that Marco and Paola were just a two-hour train ride away and that I could go “home” whenever I needed a break from my life in Firenze.