Free Travel #2 (Part 1)

Students began leaving late in the morning of Wednesday, October 15, for the second free travel period. From what I've heard, it seems that nearly every group found itself in Switzerland at some point, but various groups made trips to Germany, Austria, northern Italy, France, and Belgium as well.

Once again, my family remained in Italy. On Wednesday we drove north from Citerna before lunch and made it to Ravenna around 1:00. We spent between three and four hours there enjoying Byzantine mosaics in 1,500-year-old churches (San Vitale, the mausoleum of Galla Placidia, and Sant'Apollinare Nuovo), seeing Dante's tomb, and visiting the small diocesan museum containing, among other things, a 6^th-century throne made entirely of ivory. We bought a little mosaic kit for the kids so they could make a picture according to a pre-made design once we get back to the states.

Late in the afternoon we drove another two hours or more to Padua, which was to be our home base for the next few days. We did not have good directions to the hostel where we were staying, and we ended up meandering through the center of town for at least thirty minutes trying to find it. I had to stop the car and ask for directions in pidgin Italian twice, but we finally arrived and even found a place to park the car on the crowded streets surrounding the hostel. We hiked to a pizzeria in the next neighborhood for supper (it was nearly 8:00 by this point), and everyone was ready for bed when we got back.

Thursday morning we were up early and fought our way northwards in the car through a maze of one-way streets to the Padua train station, where we parked. We walked down to the Scrovegni Chapel, which is home to one of the most famous cycles of frescoes in Europe: Giotto's story of the life of the Virgin Mary and of Christ. I had visited the chapel in 1998, but the process is much more complex now; we had had to reserve (and prepay for) tickets online in advance, and show up an hour before the assigned time slot for our visit. We took advantage of our hour-long wait to see the art museum adjacent to the chapel; it contained a number of very nice pieces from the medieval and Renaissance periods. After seeing the chapel we took about an hour to do a walking tour of central Padua, visiting the market (where I bought a pair of socks because most of the pairs I brought to Italy with me have since walked off from the hotel's laundry room) and the Duomo. We encountered some oddly-clad people in one piazza who were apparently university students involved in something strange. It may have been graduation festivities; Padua's university graduates a constant trickle of students throughout the year, so there is always a party somewhere.

We returned to the train station and drove east to see the Brenta Canal, which runs between Padua and Venice. Beginning in the 15^th century, when Venice began to expand its empire inland from the coast, the Venetian nobility built numerous villas on either side of the canal's banks. We did not drive the canal's entire length but saw quite a few impressive structures nonetheless. We stopped at one of the largest, the Villa Pisani, and paid to go into the house and grounds. The house was nice and had a Tiepolo ceiling painting, but the grounds were the big hit with the kids because there was a labyrinth on one side. Around 4:00 we left the villa and drove to Vicenza, on the other side of Padua. We parked outside the town and took a free shuttle bus into the center. By this time, obviously, all the attractions were closing up, but we took a couple of hours to walk around and enjoy the Palladian architecture. Around 7:30, we took the shuttle back to the car and returned to the hostel in Padua. Another long day.