padova

We went to padova my last day in italy...again, boyd and mandy each took a day off work, and it was awesome...

before heading to padova, we spent some time in sportler...it's an italian sporting goods store, very similar to an american REI, or australian/new zealand kathmandu...in other words, one of my ideas of heaven...all sorts of sports clothes and equipment...it would've been very very easy to spend a lot of money...as it was, i restricted myself to a rain jacket and a pair of sunnies...i remember having some sort of water resistant jacket when i was a kid, but this was my first real rain jacket...i know it's silly, but i was/am excited...

after sportler, we drove to padova...it was a roman town, and you can still see the outer walls in a few places...one of the highways along the way has been rebuilt, and the GPS doesn't know it yet, so for a while it appeared as though we were driving in the unknown...fortunately, we joined back up with the 'old' road, and everything was fine...it's funny how doing that drops an hour off the expected arrival time...phew!

The fun part was in figuring out where to go in padova, and then finding parking once we arrived...in the middle of an old italian city, with one way streets, it isn't always easy to find what you are looking for...especially because other people have already taken all the parking places you see...every now and again we thought we could see a place, but just as we got closer, we figured out it wasn't a place at all...actually, all of that was boyd and mandy...i sat quietly in the back seat, since i had no idea where we were going, and i'm somewhat lost without a map...

after finally finding parking, our first order of business was lunch...somehow, it took us yonks to find a place to eat...i'm not sure how that happened...we did stop for gelatto along the way, though that should only have taken 5-10 minutes...

we saw the university of padova, which was pretty neat...one stairwell was painted with frescoes, and there was a statue in there...other hallways had crests painted on the ceilings...i'm assuming they were the crests of the families of students who attended the school? We saw a couple other statues, we saw a giant market area...we saw a couple piazzas in the middle of town...it was quite the nice town for wandering...we saw a giant clock tower...

once we finally did find lunch, it was at the very end of lunch time...VERY END...in italy, many restaurants have lunch service, after which they take a break before dinner service...

showing up at the end of the time for lunch service means you don't get served...which is not good if you're really hungry...the idea of doing anything for the customer isn't the same as it is in the states...they simply say no, and you move on...the restaurant that finally seated us only had two iteams of food left...steak, and some sort of lasagna...i hadn't had steak yet, and it's what boyd eats every time he and mandy go out to eat...(he's not a foodie, she is)...the steak was tasty, mandy was okay with her lasagna...

after lunch we wandered a bit more...i found a gelatto place that had (among other flavours) pink grapefruit gelatto...a flavour i'd never had before...as far as i know, it isn't a common flavour...it tasted exactly like pink grapefruit...yum...

during the entire day, i found only one place that sold postcards...i'm usually able to spot places by the dozen, but this town didn't seem to have them...padova is known as a university town, but not so much as a tourist town...the postcards i ended up with weren't the greatest, they left a lot to be desired...

the last place we saw was a park...we didn't end up there on purpose, it was just what seemed to be the specific location of a tree giving off cotton...i have no idea what kind of tree it is, but when it blooms, it floats through the air, and covers everything...crazy...as much as anything, it was fun taking photos...on the way back from the park (and i'm not even sure it was a park, it might have just been an enclosed yard next to something or other) we crossed the "river"...

i put 'river" in quotes because it wasn't big...more like a moat, or canal...back in roman days, this was just outside the city walls, and served as one of the city defenses...

from there, mandy and boyd took me back to the airport...sad...i had a great week with friends, i was sad to leave...great weather nearly the entire trip, gelatto every day, native english speakers, relaxing, new sights, etc...what more could a girl want during holidays?