Esploraria Il Parco dell'Avventura, Lame (MO)

Climbing Babies

Hub was telling me the other day that we are here on earth to enjoy, seek pleasure. That worried me profoundly, for I believe that we are here rather as part of a larger scheme of things. Like the ubiquitous ants and the shitting pigeons, we are here to serve our part albeit one that has to change and adapt to the environment and the times. In the past, he and his bunch of friends (I always say that birds of the same feather flock together) used to upset me with what I considered selfish, egoistic behaviour when it came to seeking pleasure (living each day like it's your last one?) and it was our being away from Paris in the last few years that had more or less allowed me to forget that. To hear him say that, I started getting goosebumps and a sense of foreboding. When you see all the suffering around us, how can you say without any qualms that we are here to enjoy life?

Anyway, I tortured him a little yesterday by insisting that he please our children by driving us to Parco Esploraria in Lame (MO) near Zocca. He complained all the way : the mud roads were horrible (GPS' fault or was it mine?), the outing was badly organised (we didn't have lunch before setting out and the pizzeria nearby was closed), wasn't that too nice a day not to go to the pool at the golf instead etc. I shut my trap for a while (because he may be very calm with other people but with the family he's capable of exploding and doing weird things like scream, drive the car to the curb, especially when he's stressed out at work like nowadays) and then at some point I pointed out that for once, the children were not even complaining about the horrible journey, they were so excited to be going to the Park they just wanted to talk about what they would do there. Doesn't that give one pleasure?

Church in Zocca Rolling hills around

We found a nice pizzeria just a few minutes from the Park in the nice little town of Zocca. Very pretty and the hometown of Italian rock star Vasco Rossi. Sometimes we shouldn't plan everything, we should leave a little room for pleasant surprises.

Parco Esploraria

And Parco Esploraria (750m above sea level) was lovely, a nice little place for doing what we came to do - Tree Climbing. The park contains structures for tree climbing, wall climbing, mountain biking, snow-tubing (during winter), outdoor excursions, school trips, holiday camps etc. It's quite well-organised and I much prefer it to the larger and more well-known outfit in Monte Cimone. Eldest Son and Hub would climb the Adult course (17 euros) and the Babies the Children's course (12 euros). There's also a Baby course (2-5 years, 7 euros).

Adult course

We were a little worried at first that Baby Boy would be too short for the Children's course. Indeed he often had difficulty reaching the higher ropes, but his sister's help plus his courage, motivation and enthusiasm made up for it and he did beautifully on the entire course. Finished the whole thing in less than 2 hours and had time to repeat the whole course. He was really doing it like a Pro towards the end, and though I had to stay on the ground to follow them through (boring and tiring), I was really happy. And the Babies, needless to say, were as pleased and proud as peacocks.

Babies in action

On the way back, I saw a few places serving Bolenghi, a crepe-like local speciality eaten both sweet and savoury. If our friend weren't so grumpy and not ready to please other people, I would have loved to stop and try one.