Hotel Maccaroni Padua

... Ages through the Renaissance, and connects the works on canvas to the sculptural works that preceded them. We were glad that we visited here last , because it tied together everything that had come before. (The Rick Steeves audio guides helped tremendously!)

Tomorrow, we set out for our road trip through Tuscany and, hopefully, a couple of days at a less hectic pace, visiting the hill towns on our way back to Rome.

Can't believe we only have two days left!

... man in order to attempt to salvage his dead father’s soul. Regardless of the intent, it is an amazing site for both artistic and religious reasons.
The rest of the day was spent driving the Autostrada from Padua to Florence. Up and down mountain with gigantic trucks weaving across the lane lines, everyone at maximum speed and tailgaiting like nothing you would ever see in the U. S. And, yet,

Blog Day 5 (Venice 2), Wednesday, December 9
We rose well-rested and after enjoying the hotel’s breakfast buffet, set off for St. Mark’s Square, where we spent most of our day. With the national holiday crowds dispersed, it finally paid off to be here in the off season! There were no lines for the Basillica or any of the “extra” (“for a small fee”) attractions on the square. It is no longer allowed to feed the pigeons, with the positive result ...

... of fruit, and waited until we could check in.

When the owner got there, he informed us that the hostel had been shut down for winter, so he was housing us in hotel rooms. He gave a 3 person room to the girls, and Steve had to stay in a room with another guy, but he was only staying for one night so he didn’t really care. We were all very pleased with our rooms, but so tired from the ...

... checked the translator it meant Out of Service. Well that's great I thought now we are going to get yelled at on the train but what could we do.

When the train arrived we got on and there was a conductor right there so we showed our tickets to her and said Fuori Servizio so she wrote on the ticket and everything was okay. Yeah. Anyway we took the hour long train ride to Milan. Checked our luggage at the Train station and headed to the Duomo in Milan. We had a coffee and ...

... next to two families from BC for the remainder of the trip. Venice was amazing!! It really is unique!! We walked to our hotel which was really quite close and dropped off our things. We picked up a map and started wandering around in our area. We were right off the Lista d' Spanga which had so many great stores. It was kind of overcast and gloomy. It was drizzling a little. We went into a ...

... the public transportation is. We had to pay 12 Euros per person for a day's ticket. Public transportation includes buses & taxis, cruising on water!! Yes on water. I couldn't believe there would be such a place on earth where people would have Water Buses & Water Taxis. Some of them even had parking places for their private Boat Cars! The bus & taxis stops were floating on water. We got into one ...

... Thomas Mann's Death in Venice? It's features a cholera outbreak. Not really a feel-good book.) Anyhow, the city floods about 100 times a year, and the Piazza San Marco is the low point of the island so that's usually the first to go. On our first night there, the water was coming up from the grates and flooded out the entire front of the Basilica and parts of the Piazza. This is very common. Even though our hotel was not on a ...

... one out, too). May 2 - we took the 42 minute train ride up the mountain to the Gornergratt. It's just a bit over 10,000 feet up there and the views of the Matterhorn along the way are superb. Once you're up there, there isn't much to do, except to wander around & admire the views and wait for the next train going down. Of course, if the ski trails are open you can ski back down t Zermatt, but at this time of the year the snow is soft & icy in spots, so the ski runs on that ...

... Give this to us - we did pause, thinking it a little odd that the Austrian train company would let us travel to the border for free, but he was the Ticket Man, and who were we to question his generosity?? So, spending as many coins as we could on munchies etc. so that we wouldn't be left with unchangeable money (and with very few schilling notes in our pockets) we boarded the 7 ...