Po Plain looks ever so pretty in pink

Most of the time the Po Valley from Verona over Modena to Rimini is just plain plain with flat endless fields stretching far into the horizon only to be interrupted by inevitable traffic jams around Borgo Panigale and San Lazzero and a view to brand new concrete high-rises, encircling charming old city centres. But, for a couple of weeks each spring the plain becomes downright beautiful, when thousands of fruit trees bloom and cover the area with a vast patchwork of delicate rosy white, brigh neon green and candyfloss-coloured sugar-pink.

I suppose the white in time will become apples and pears, pink flowers turn into peaches and abricos and green fields grow up to be corn and wheat. To think that Pianura Padana, which dystopians see as a European Bombay, when all the 20 million potential communiters living on the plain merge into one big city, is also one of the main producers of fruit and vegetables for the European market is amazing. And right now the cultivated nature of the Po Valley can be enjoyed in technicolour by everyone passing through the lower plain.