Italia Grandiosa - Padua

I slept in today and got up at 6.45. I had breakfast and packed my bags. We left the hotel at 8.30 and went to Padua. We visited the church Chiesa degli Erementani for a short time. This 13th century church was completely destroyed during the Second World War. Some of Italy’s greatest artistic artifacts were destroyed forever. The church was remarkably restored, but it was still a great loss.
After the church I walked a bit in a close by park. It was very nice sitting on a bench and enjoying the sun. It was around 25 degrees Celsius. We got an hour of free time from our general, so I walked around a bit. I visited a market and prices there were very affordable. I didn’t buy anything. I did visit the Palazzo del Capitanio. The frescos on the ceiling were nice, and inside there was an exhibition of modern jewelry. It was too modern for my liking. Admission was € 8,00. After our granted free time, we visited a basilica again. We visited the Basilica di Sant’ Antonio. It’s an impressive building. I went to a lecture about the life of St Antony, and wasn’t really impressed. It was a preach about the goodness of the Saint, but there was no criticism at all. Seeing the poverty in the Middle Ages and richness of the basilica, I wonder where the money was spend on.
We had lunch, typically Italian again, a chicken snitzel with French fries… I still liked it. After lunch we drove towards Florence. It took 3,5 hours to get to the hotel. We were staying at hotel Marrani in Ronta. I got a lousy room and did some laundry. We were going to stay for 2 nights here. Food was terrible here. Dinner consisted out of cold pea soup, and a 2 slices of ham. I thought it was the appetizer, but this was all we got. I had 4 beers and talked with the other people. The hotel is a good place to have some drinks, because a large beer was only € 1,50. The boss of this family owned hotel was called opa ( granddad ) by us. Went to sleep at 22.30.

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