As I did take a lot of pictures in Italy, and nothing else is happening in my life than work, apartment hunting and bad weather, I thought I’d give you a tour of Tuscany and neighbouring country. First out is Cremona and Parma where we spent our first two days.

We had checked the forecast and brought an umbrella, we used it more than once unfortunately.

Every town in Italy has one of these, a duomo, this is the one in Cremona.

Cremona is the home of the Stradivarius violins, and there are still many who make violins there.

They like marble in Italy

…and arches

This is the Lambrusco! It is a very common wine in the north on Italy and used as an everyday wine (as they actually have wine everyday). The nice thing about it is that it is a sparkling red wine (not rosé) and is perfect with simple Italian dishes.

Parma had some museums

And no warmth (as you can see). Just after this Erik went back to the car to get his had and gloves.

The duomo in Parma.

We wore a lot of clothes in the beginning of the trip. And I totally adore my Nike Free 3.0, they are pretty, they are comfy, they are light and they take no space in your suitcase.

Very-happy-borg

They do details wonderfully

And everybody had these, we have two of them at home too. Erik was very happy (he is the flower master of our house).

Coloures, balconies, lamp posts 🙂

The most stylish lady all colour coodinated in navy and brown. She had bought flowers or something for her friend, and the friend sent down a basket to get the present. (Don’t hate me for taking pictures of strangers)

One of the few pictures of us together, the only bad thing about travelling just the two of us.

We went and looked in a really cool design shop.

Oh, and went to the resturant Ida mentioned, to have lunch. As any respectable place they made their own pasta.

And they had kept old bits and pieces.

Like a newspaper clipping of the former owner with Marylin Monroe.

These apartments had colour coordinated flower pots.

Gnocci with gorgonzola and walnuts. Literally just that, those three ingredients. It was delicious and simple and very Italian.

Ravioli. And I loved how you could buy a glass, 0.25, 0.50 or a full bottle of wine at restaurants. So you could buy two or three or more glasses, depending on what you felt like that night.

Then we had icecream (we are Norwegians, temperature is not important when you want icecream) at Emilia. They had two chocolate fountains and superb icecream.

After another stroll through Parma we drove to Firenze. We hadn’t realized that there is a mountain range separating north and middle Italy, but there is. And the combination of showers and three (!!!) accidents made us one hour late on our two hour trip. But we had a magnificent steak for dinner when we finally arrived, so it ended well.