Padova, aka the Real Italy

I wish I had spent more time in Italy this semester!  My friend Katie and I had decided spur of the moment a couple months ago to do a trip to Venice upon seeing a reduced airfare on our new favorite airline, SkyEurope.  However, when the time rolled around last week to head off to Italia, I was still so exhausted from spring break that I have to admit I wasn't exactly looking forward to 5 more days of travel.

We'd decided in advance that we were going to spend two nights outside of Venice in a nearby town before going to Venice for another two nights.  We'd decided on Padova (Padua, same thing), a smaller town about an hour's drive outside of Venice.  There were a few reasons, including the fact that Padova was the setting for Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and accessibility to other towns in the area.  The main reason though, was the presence of a fairly cheap hostel.

Padova ended up being amazing.  Unlike Venice, which is beautiful but not necessarily representative of real life in Italy, Padova wasn't packed with tourists.  We decided to just stay in Padova instead of trying to do side trips from there, and spent two days just hanging out and experiencing life in Italy.

We arrived at the Venice-Treviso Airport at about noon on Wednesday (Yes, we skipped class.  It was totally worth it.) and took a bus to Padova, arriving at around 1:30.  We trekked to our hostel instead of taking public transport; it was across the central area of the city from the bus station, but it only took 20 minutes.  The sun was out, the sky was blue, and we almost passed out from excitement when we saw the palazzo that was literally around the corner from the hostel.  Speaking of the hostel, it turned out to be a very odd place.  As this is Italy we're talking about, it was a slightly religious institution by nature, and there was an 11 pm curfew before they quite literally locked you out of the building if you were late.  Not to mention the fact that they kicked you out of the building from 9:30 am until 4:30 pm so they could clean.  We found that out the first morning when an Italian man poked his head into our room and made us leave.  Also, there was a large German religious youth group staying there that Katie accidentally walked in on while they were praying in the rec room.

After dropping our things at the hostel, we headed straight for the palazzo to relax and eat.  There were countless other people loitering around on the grass (Don't these people have jobs?) and we were happy to join them.  After a while, we decided to wander around the city, checking out the numerous churches (the main tourist attraction) and indulging in some gelato.  After a while, the made our way back to the piazza to sit and enjoy some more before getting back to the hostel before curfew.

The next day we were not blessed with the same amazing weather from the day before, but we struck out regardless.  It didn't rain (really) but the sky was a sad grey all day.  The first thing we did after finding some breakfast was head up to the train station to purchase our tickets to Venice for the next morning; we had to make sure we got on a specific train so that we could arrive at the same time as Katie's friend Carrie, who was meeting us there from where she's studying abroad in Florence.  After that stop, we did some more wandering, at one point getting extremely lost on the outskirts of the city for about an hour before we were able to find our way back.  After a late lunch of pizza, we ducked into a church to avoid some rain and hung out for a while.  We did some more wandering that night and got some sleep before heading to Venice the next morning.

One of the big churches in Padova

Inside the cloister

Looking up at the church from the cloister

Another big church, featuring some strange modern doors and animals representing the 4 Evangelists on the exterior (thank you, art and architecture class)

Inside the church--I think this is one of my favorite churches I've come across this semester.  The light was very natural and lit up the space quite differently from the others.

Lounging on the grass in the palazzo

Moat and statues around the palazzo

Me

Fave church in the background

Cute street.  People ride bikes everywhere in Padova.

They had canals as well

The Duomo.  Not as impressive as you might think.

Bridge over the moat at dusk

Mmm...gelato

Open air market

This park is on the site of some ruins of a Roman theater

I don't know what famous Italian this is, but he looks like he enjoyed a good time.

Interesting marketing methods of the Catholic Church

Dusk at the palazzo yet again

Buildings around the edge of the palazzo

We stopped in this park on the way to the train station in the morning to savor Padova before leaving in a couple hours

There was a wall of Yellow Submarine graffiti on the side of a highway entrance near the station that made me extremely happy.

Padova train station just before we head off to Venezia

Spring has finally arrived!

Spring has arrived in Prague after weeks of insane wavering between spring and winter.  The day I left for spring break, it snowed.  A week before that, I walked to the grocery store (2 blocks away from the dorm) in the sun, and when I left the store, it was hailing.  As I was walking back to the dorm, the hail changed to rain before all of the clouds went away and it was sunny again.  I'm not kidding, it was like that for nearly a week.

Luckily, after spring break there was a big change in the weather situation in Prague.  It was sunny.  And hot--we're talking in the 70 degrees range.  And all of a sudden, everything in the city was green.  I'll have more pictures of Prague spring amazingness in later posts, but here are some pictures of my friend Katie and I doing some paddle boating on the Vltava River.

Advertisement for paddle boats featuring a super-relevant pirate

Katie's pretty excited

It was a beautiful day, so there were a lot of other people on the river

National Theater

In case you've forgotten since I've been away so long, that's me.

Looking down the river

Frank Gehry's Dancing House

Prague Castle off in the distance

The only swan paddle boat.  It was really, really slow.  We will be getting this boat at some point before we leave.

Spring Break Part 8: Paris Day 4

It's official--this is the last of the Spring Break posts.  Huzzah!

On my final day in Paris I went to a flea market and the Louvre.  The flea market was on the outer fringes of Montmartre and decidedly sketchy, so I wandered a bit and then booked over to the Louvre.  I'd been doing so much walking over the last week that I didn't have much energy left for the museum.  I stayed for a couple hours, saw the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo among more than a few other things and then headed back to the hostel.

That night, Lauren and I decided to go to a movie in the Latin Quarter.  Initially we decided on a Hitchcock film, but when we got to the theater, we saw that a theater around the corner was showing Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, so naturally we changed our plans.  It was an old cinema with two theaters--ours was decorated with red velvet all over and had a capacity of about 100 people.  Luckily, the movie was in English and subtitled in French so we were able to understand what was going on.  Or, we were able to understand what was being said.  Understanding the movie itself was another question.

Overall, spring break was an amazing trip.  I wish I could go back to all of the cities we visited for longer to really experience life there instead of just seeing the sights.  However, I know now more than ever that Prague was the best choice for me.  When I got off the airplane in Prague, I knew I was coming home.

Outside the Louvre

Pyramid outside the Louvre

In the lobby of the Louvre

The Mona Lisa

Crowd in front of the Mona Lisa.  Which is bigger?

Paintings by Archimbaldo.  We studied him in art and architecture.  This type of paintings were meant to represent the worldliness of the patrons by including objects (fruit, vegetables, plants, living species) in portraiture.

Long hallway, in which there is a group of Leonardo da Vinci paintings that almost no people were looking at, very much different from the Mona Lisa

Venus di Milo

I had to take the Da Vinci Code picture.  I couldn't help it.