Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Grand Tour - Parma, Italy and Parma, Ohio

 The Parma, Italy tourism office has a web site offering advice ranging from when to visit, to how to arrange your trip itinerary once you arrive.  There are several day trips described, including tours of castles and cliffs.  

It's a medium-sized city of about 200,000 inhabitants. 



If you go there, you MUST have something with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, the true "parmesan", along with some Prosciutto di Parma (cured ham) as an antipasto, perhaps? 

Vittoria Adorni, a professional cyclist, was born in Parma.  He 

won two races in his first full year as a professional in 1961, riding for Philco and winning stages of the Giro d'Italia and the Tour of Sardinia. Adorni was more a domestique than a leader, but he nevertheless won the 1965 Giro and the 1968 world road race championship. The championship was on the car race circuit at Imola, Italy. He broke clear with 93 km still to ride. He finished 10 minutes ahead of the field, helped in the peloton by his Italian teammates and also by Merckx, his normal teammate, who did not take up the chase.

The Cycling Hall of Fame, an American organisation, says:

"In 1968, Adorni taught Eddy Merckx of Belgium how to properly eat and rest during a Grand Tour. Merckx used this knowledge to not only win his first grand tour, the Giro d'Italia, but also the mountains and points jerseys as well, the first time ever this was done in a grand tour. Adorni finished second to Merckx in that race."

Trip Advisor offers a description of the Cicletteria: 

Parma is the perfect city to discover by bike, for its short distances and because it's flat, that's why residents use the bike to move around in every season, especially in the city center, the town has in fact a network of bicycle paths almost everywhere. At the Cicletteria are available 600 seats to park the bike, 81 seats to park scooter or moto and about 50 bikes for adult or kids for rental.

Parma, Ohio, is a city about half the size of Parma, Italy, with about 80,000 inhabitants. It is a large suburb of Cleveland and part of the Cleveland Metropolitan area. 

 There are numerous metroparks in the area with bike trails, and also is near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It's also the home of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, a busy hub.  The city slogan is "Progress through Partnerships" and that is evidenced by a sundial created by a local welding school in front of City Hall.  That's my bike in front of the sundial. 



Some items about Parma's history are listed on this website, including that the many settlers of Parma were of German descent, and over time the city has become a mix of cultures including Ukrainian, Polish, Italian and Irish.  Cleveland's "Little Italy" neighborhood is about 10 miles north-east of Parma on Mayfield Road. 


 

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