After our busy time in Venice with Nicole and Chris we needed a good rest so we only went 36km west to Padua. Padua is an old university town which has the world’s first botanical gardens (more than 450 years old), a church with the relics of St Anthony (bones and body parts for all the non-Catholics) and the Scrovegni Chapel which is completely covered with frescoes on the inside.
The gardens had an interesting section of poisonous plants, turns out that lots of tasty looking berries are pretty deadly. So it’s not a good idea to eat random berries you find in a forest. The Basilica of St Anthony is actually a major pilgrimage site as there are long lines of people from all over the world waiting to kiss and touch his sarcophagus and pray to it. We even saw a few groups of people from India making the pilgrimage. The Scrovegni Chapel was painted in 1305 by Giotto, one of the founders of the Renaissance, so a lot of effort goes into protecting the frescoes and you have to sit in an airlock for 15min before you’re allowed to go in. But once you get inside it’s pretty amazing, especially when you realise that the frescos are more than 700 years old and the people in them don’t look like weird out-of-proportion mutants from the dark ages.
We had a stop in Verona too, which is probably most famous for being the setting for Romeo & Juliet. So of course we had to see Juliet’s House (at least from the outside, we weren’t paying €6 to stand on the balcony). It definitely wasn’t what we expected. First off you have to go through a short tunnel to get to the courtyard, which is covered in graffiti left by lovers. Some of this graffiti includes love notes written on band-aids and chewing gum.
Once you’re in the courtyard you then have to fight through a crowd to get near the balcony or the statue of Juliet. I’m not sure why, but just about everyone who was posing for a photo with Juliet had a hand on her boobs. I don’t know if you’re supposed to rub them for good luck or if a genie lives inside her boobs but it was a bit weird. It wasn’t just teenage boys either; old men, middle aged women, a mother and daughter. Everyone was getting in on the act.
After our stop in Verona we stopped in our final city in Italy, Milan. Everyone says that the people in Milan are all super stylish but I think I must be pretty good at dressing like a daggy Italian as I had people talk to me in fast Italian, thinking I was one of them. Something about hiking boots and a black Columbia rain jacket makes me look more Italian. Go figure.
Milan has some beautiful old buildings like the Duomo cathedral, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and the Sforza Castle.
We also got to see The Last Supper which is pretty badly degraded as the paint wasn’t long lasting, it was exposed to the weather for a while when most of the church was destroyed, and when Napoleon came along his troops graffiti’ed the painting and used it as target practise. One thing we’ve noticed a lot in our trip around Europe is: Napoleon came along and stole everything he could carry, and whatever he couldn’t he destroyed it in some way. Nice guy.
Probably the most important thing we did in Milan was sign up to be judges for the Gelato Festival. Well actually we gave them some money and they gave us a card that let us taste 14 different gelati before voting for our favourite. Pedr doesn’t believe me when I say that it was an accident that we happened to be in Milan when the Gelato Festival was on. I gave up trying to convince him as it was wasting precious gelato-eating time. We’re sad to say goodbye to Italy (and gelato), hopefully we won’t be gone for too long!
Leave a Reply