A Lovely Day in Padua

+JMJ+
It's Sunday night here in Roma.  I returned to the eternal city this morning from a lovely weekend spent in Padua and Venice.

Piazza in front of St. Anthony's Basilica in Padua

A canal in Venice

I spent Friday in Padua and Saturday in Venice.  I'll take you through both of my days and try to add fun little details that you might not come across if you just Google "day in Venice".  Get excited!

I got up at 4:15am on Friday to catch my flight into Venice.  I don't even know what time my flight actually left, I just know I had to be in a cab by 5am.  It really is a miracle that I made it.  Thanks, guardian angel! 

The flight went smoothly, so far so good.  In 45 minutes we were landing in Venice!  (here "we" refers to myself and the four other girls I went with)  From the airport we hopped on a bus to Padua, about an hour's drive from Venice.  We stayed at a place run by missionaries to Africa.  I have no idea why they are where they are or what they do, but the brothers were very nice and gave us rooms (they even had showers!) for only 15 euro a night!  Score!

We bought our food at a cheapo grocery store to save money.  We packed a picnic and had a lovely lunch of cheese, pesto, bread, and fruit in a beautiful park.  I had never had pesto before I came to Italy.  It's pretty common over here and super delicious.  It was the best lunch ever!  We had so much fun!

By the time we had dropped our backpacks off, gone grocery shopping, and had our picnic, it was siesta time.  In other words, everything was closed, most importantly all the churches we wanted to go into.  This gave us the opportunity to wander around all of Padua for a couple hours.  It was great!  We were hoping to rent bikes for the day since it turns out that pretty much everyone in Padua and their brother bikes to get around, but that didn't end up working out.  We stopped by a market set up in the middle of a piazza and did some shopping, then meandered our way towards St. Anthony's Basilica.  On the way, we enjoyed the quaint little town.  Padua is by no means a little village, but it is definitely stepping away from the crowded business of Rome.  I discovered apple gelato that was "all natural."  It tasted like applesauce gelato-ized!!  My mouth is watering just recalling it...mmmmm.  We came to the main piazza in Padua in front of St. Anthony's Basilica and took a stroll through it.  It was big and open and beautiful!  Padua was a day of some great quality time with my classmates.  Such a gift!

We had time before Mass to stop in a church that was next to the basilica.  The church was pretty empty.  We were looking around at the side chapels when we realized that ST. LUKE THE EVANGELIST (the man who wrote the Gospel according to Luke) WAS BURIED IN THAT CHURCH!  Kind of a BIG DEAL!!  That was exciting.

Humble tomb of St. Luke the Evangelist

Mass at St. Anthony's Basilica was very good.  I was very thankful that we had the opportunity to go to Mass!  

Basilica of St. Anthony

After Mass, all the churches were open again!  Yay!  We were able to go in and see and pray in five or six on our walk back towards the missionaries of Africa place.  During this time were were also on the hunt for some vegetable fried rice, as it was a Friday during lent (no meat for Catholics!).  Tired and exhausted on our way to the last Church of the night, we found a Japanese restaurant!  It wasn't Chinese, but we all decided it would do.  Also on our adventures we found a Chinese restaurant (that was closed) that had fish in the floor and a laundromat that was dimly lit with blue lights and blasting music.  Basically, it looked like a laundromat club, haha.  So random!

Fish in the floor!!!

When we finally got back to our rooms for the night, we had the best dinner ever.  The best dinner ever consisted of bread, pesto, fruit, cheese, Japanese take-out, and Nutella, all of us crowded around a desk, no plates, plastic knives, and borrowed forks and cups.  We had such a good time together!  To make things even better, that night I think I slept the best I ever have in my entire life.

Well, it is getting late here and I have a midterm tomorrow, so I'm afraid that I will have to leave you with these random tidbits about Padua, in suspense about Venice and fill you in tomorrow evening!  I know, I've got a lot of catching up to do already on here, but bear with me just a little more!  It will get done!  Buona notte!

FunFact: In Italy, Padua is actually "Padova," and Venice is actually "Venezia"