Italy At Last

Carrie always says that her happy place is on our four season porch back home in Indiana, where we start most mornings relaxing with a steaming hot cup of coffee for me and a green tea for Carrie, and contemplate the day ahead. However, right after that, comes Italy! There’s something about this country that makes one feel right at home. Maybe it’s the friendly people, or the casual relaxed pace of living, the quintessential charm of the cafe lined narrow streets or just the incredible tasty food and delicious wine that you find everywhere you go.

Our first stop in Italy is Padua (or Padova, in Italian). We picked this moderate sized town as our first stop because it sits at a crossroads of north/south and east/west railway lines, it offers its own historic sites and it has close proximity to the three Vs: Verona, Vicenza and Venice. We knew we could spend several days here and find plenty of things to see and do.

When choosing a location as a base to work from, location is tremendously important. We were very fortunate in cities like Prague and Strasbourg, where even though we stayed outside the city centers, we had easy access to affordable and convenient public transportation to get us to anywhere in the city. In Padua, we chose to stay at a Marriott property a ways outside the city (thinking our typical upgrade would be a suite but no such room option at this one), but it didn’t have easy transport options to the city center or to the train station. We have had to rely on taxies much of the time, which is more costly than we would like. Lesson learned!

In Padua we visited the Orto Botanico, founded in 1545, the world’s oldest academic botanical garden. It is part of the University of Padua, the world’s fifth oldest surviving university, which boasts Copernicus as one of its alumni and Galileo as a notable faculty member. We saw some amazing fly catcher plants as pictured below.

And, of course, the food.

Vicenza

We made a day trip to close by Vicenza to see the old theatre and walk through the small historical town.

Italians start their dinner time around 7:30PM. That’s a little late for Americans like us. We frequently choose to have a big lunch, and maybe just a snack later on. This works well as the restaurants are set up to have lunch menus similar to their dinner menus, as well as providing us the opportunity to walk off those calories.

Verona

Timing is everything. On our visit to Verona, my primary objective was to see the fabulous Roman arena, only to find it was closed on Monday, the day of our visit. Also, one of its famous bridges was being renovated and completely covered with scaffolding. We still enjoyed walking through the beautiful old city.

Romeo and Juliet

Verona is also famous for the balcony where Shakespeare’s star crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet pined for each other. It’s not true history, but it was fun to see the crowds gather to see the balcony and touch the statue of Juliet.

In many European cities English is readily available in signage, menus and schedules. In Italy, not so much. One of the managers at a restaurant we visited showed us that our iPhones could translate just about any language to English. This has been a great help, especially here in Italy. See below:

Next up is Bologna!!