Padova, Verona, Venice and Rome

Hello everyone! Sorry for posting this late, btw.

I have just spent a week in Padova, a small university town about half an hour from Venice. It suffered extensive damage during World War II and was significantly rebuilt. St Anthony’s tomb can be found at the Church of St Anthony (where else?) and his jawbone and tongue are also on display! The Prato Della Valle is the second biggest square in Europe (behind the Red Square), full of fountains, statues and market stalls. I was also introduced to Roberto and his tiny bar on the Piazza Della Erbe, where I had quite a few Spritz Aperols — a traditional local drink consisting of proseco (a sweet, fizzy white wine), aperol (a form of bitters) and a very small amount of soda water. From Padova, I also went on day-trips to Verona and Venice.

Verona is a very pretty, slightly larger town, and I was quite annoyed to realise I’d left my camera behind at the hotel. In particular, the cathedral (duomo) was the single most impressive church I’ve seen yet — it was an awe-inspiring experience to enter it. I also saw the house of Juliet (as in Romeo and Juliet), and the statue of Juliet that traditionally grants a long and happy love life if you walk up and caress her right breast. Weird, eh?

The next day I visited Venice, which is much larger, busier and noisier than Padova and Verona. Despite the incomplete maps and the many twisting alleyways, I failed to get completely lost even once. The Basilica de San Marco is a huge church, completely covered in golden mosaics, of which I managed to sneak a few photos despite the signs and the best efforts of the security guards. Apart from visiting the Basilica de San Marco and several other churches, I spent the day wandering at random away from the busiest of the tourist areas, which were generally filled with stalls selling cheap trinkets and knock-off designer goods. The grand canal and the many smaller canals were always fun to run across as seemingly major roads would often lead to dead ends at the water’s edge.

As I write this, I’ve now spent three days in Rome, which was a five hour train ride from Padova. So far, I’ve seen many monuments, towers and other notable historical buildings/remains. Yesterday was spent on an excellent tour of the Colliseum and the nearby forum and Palatine (the hill where Romulus and Remus first arrived and where the original Emperor’s palace was built). On the tour of the forum, we also discovered that one tower we’d walked past and shrugged off as just some ruin was actually the tower from which Nero had watched Rome burn. It was another experience that served to hammer home the ridiculous amount of history to be found on the streets of Rome.

In addition to the endless historical sites, we’ve also been witness to the amazing tradition of Italian parking, which defies both belief and any ntion of sensibility. The Italians drive with reckless abandon, which perhaps explains the almost constant sounds of ambulance sirens, either in the distance or flying down the very street on which you stand. Traffic rules are apparently never enforced, which is in odd contrast with my experience at the Padova train station, where the local police refused to allow me to sit outside the station while waiting for travel mates. Apparently sitting on the vast open concrete square, well out of the way of any pedestrians, taxis and busses was a more serious offence than driving through a red light, or speeding down the wrong side of the road.

Hopefully I manage to avoid the wrath of the authorities for the remainder of my trip.