Hi All,
We just had a great day out in Padova. It is a gem of a place which is not really on the tourist circuit as it overlooked by the preferred Venice. We wandered down to tourist information after finding a free wifi site which required a passport reference for Italian anti terrorism law. We were given excellent help by the enthusiastic staff person and purchased a pad ova site discount card and also booked a visit to the popular Cappella begli scrovegni. It is covered from floor to ceiling with amazing frescos by gotti. Particularly impressive was the judgement day panel. We also visited the impressive art gallery in the same area which is full of excellent renaissance art.
We continued onto the most beautiful park which had an oval shaped channel and statues around the edges, a cathedral at one end and old buildings at the other. It was impressive. Later we dropped into the small but well located botanic gardens with their wild flower garden which made us feel as if we were in the countryside.
On our continuing pilgrimage we went to st anthonies tomb looking for some amazing frescos on the dome but we didn’t find them as they were in another church but we did find them eventually and it was worth the effort.
There were so many other highlights. Giant wooden horse in a palace, uni psychology students playing drinking games on one square to name a few. We had a great couple of days out and could have spent more time….and our card was great value for money.
Decided to returned to Venice on the last day to see whether its charm would shine through once the daytrippers had left and the moon made an appearance so we caught the early evening and arrived in Venice arriving perfectly in time for the sunset. We planned to get some food from a supermarket however finding it was a little difficult and we only had a few minutes before the lights went out to encourage us to leave. We did manage to find some brie, proscuito, a large round bread and an even larger bottle of Lombroso which was going to have to do for our tea under the moonlight. A bonus were four bananas that were left behind on the counter by the previous customer who left minutes before us. We were the last customers and the door was shut behind us. Without remorse we took them and left as we figured that they would just go back into store stock anyway. The pensioner, or previous customer, could be seen walking off in the distance. Has it come to this? Stealing the food from little old ladies mouths. You be the judge.
A not so easy dilemma was how far we would go into the maze of canals for a nice spot to eat our dinner. Do we go deep inside knowing that after a couple of glasses of red wine it might be rather difficult to escape or stay close to the grand canal where the tourist traffic was higher? Sanity prevailed and we found a quiet spot for our dinner under the full moon with the occasional gondolas passing. Way off in the distance we could hear the violins playing romantic music for paying customers as we sat eating our food and discretely drinking our wine from a 1.5lt bottle wrapped in a plastic bag. Is there a theme building here? With our fortified courage we wandered deeper into Venice and stumbled onto an Italian pizza shop which had fresh pizza out of the oven. The aroma was too much and we decided to lash out and buy a piece which was quite large really and to our surprise was one of the best pizzas we have had in our lives thus far. We were tempted to gorge on but didn’t give in. A little more wandering and we were getting the lost feeling so decided to head back to the grand canal which wasn’t too hard once we found the wide streets. The train didn’t depart from Venice to Padova as scheduled so we waited then waited some more but eventually got back and didn’t meet any misfortune in the shadows of the wrong sides of the tracks.
Tired and irritable next day as the result of vigilant early morning mosquito squashing kept Vanessa up as David chased then missed a couple of mosquitoes before they stupidly returned in the light to be dispatched. However the damage was done with the broken sleep and we had an early start to Bologna.
It was a short train ride to Europe’s old university town Bologna with castles on the hills and green fields along the way. We got to the train station and found a tourist information centre and the highlights were few so decided to just store our backpacks and wander around for a day trip. Quite expensive really as it cost 4 euro for each bag for 4 hrs. It was a bit of the same old same old as we are starting to get saturated with grand old Italian renaissance towns until we found the porticoed centro storico which is an atmospheric place to wander and surprisingly there are two brick leaning towers of bologna. One is 97m high and on quite a tilt. Actually the town is quite nice and we might has misjudged it and even worse we didn’t even have spaghetti bolognaise either but we did go to the impressive cathedral. We decided to head to Florence anyway.
Departed for our final destination of the day Florence (Firenze in Italian) and Campeggio Michelangelo our camping grounds for the next 5 or 6 nights.
Bye.
David and Vanessa
