After a lovely pasta dinner people watching in one of the many Piazza’s in Padua, we retired early as we were booked into the first tour at the Cappella degli Scrovegni which as we all know is famous for the Giotto Murals that formed a critical advance in Western Art. Or we do know that now that we have paid our 10 Euro’s each and seen the little video they show you before you get into the church.
It seems Giotto was the first guy to paint people with expressions on their faces and not just as flat looking stick figures looking out of the painting. (That noise you can hear is Finella banging her head against the table because she just read that explanation – but it was in the video so it must be true). Anyway, as you can see from the pics below, that while Giotto could certainly daub, had a fairly active imagination. Don’t zoom into the picture of hell on the judgement day mural below unless you can deal with a couple of nights of troubled sleep – there is some seriously twisted s@&t going on.
Then we toured the attached gallery of literally hundreds of Renaissance paintings and sculptures, any one of which would have it’s own wall at the NGV. Unsurprisingly there was a bit of a theme because even though Giotto was a bit of a groundbreaker with perspective, he and his mates did toe the line and only painted religious topics for the next few hundred years. Not a lot of landscapes and still life’s to be seen. I include a representative picture of poor San Sebastion, he seemed to be a favourite of the Catholics and his arrow pierced body seemed to be on nearly every wall.
So then we returned to the Piazza de Fruitti (grocery square in English) for a light breakfast and to peruse the produce stalls. It only takes a few minutes browsing the wonderful smallgoods and cheeses to realise that in Australia we are sorely shortchanged by a cabal of protectionist dairy and pork meat interests hell bent on preventing us from accessing the fine produce of the European continent. Tear down the trade walls I say so that we can have delicious cheeses and salamis at a fraction of the price we currently pay. And why can’t we buy ripe tomatoes in Australia?
$5 will get you a loaf of bread and a wad of ripe, soft sheep’s milk cheese for lunch. All I can say is, bloody yum!
A short train ride into Venice (Padua is almost a suburb of Venice) and we were standing by a canal outside the train station.
Now the sound track to Venice is the constant clack of tiny suitcase wheels being dragged up and down stone staircases as tens of thousands of tourists move in and out every day. But luckily for us we have travel packs and were able to move swiftly and surely the hundred yards to our luxury Hotel. Booking accommodation on the edge of town near the train station turned out to have been the best thing we could have done. The place is a nightmare maze and full of hot, exasperated tourists dragging huge suitcases down little alleys while staring at tiny phone maps, hoping the gps can get a signal amongst the buildings. Marriage ending stuff. So here is the view from our room (in the other direction you can see about half a dozen huge cruise ships). We can say from experience that the people on the tables under the umbrellas are eating some truly great pizza (and cheaper than the price of a beer).
So we loaded up and went for a walk to find some sights to see. How hard could that be? Well no map can truly convey the complete navigational disaster that is Venice. I remember doing a bush walk in the Mallee many years ago – trying to keep your sense of direction while walking for hours through 5 meter tall scrub with no landmarks is the closest thing I know to walking in Venice, but Venice is harder.
Walk past the Venetian mask shop, turn at the place that sells glass baubles, keep going down the little alleyway, if you see a pizza bar and a handbag shop you know you are on the right track and the place you are looking for is on the canal next the the little bridge. Those directions are correct for ALL of Venice.
Hot, exhausted and dehydrated we eventually we found St Marks and St Marks Square. Good to see they saved a few bucks when building it by using marble offcuts from every other job going in Italy that century. Ummm, not to my taste.
At this point we were really glad to say we saw Venice while it is still a little off the beaten track – had the place to ourselves really. It will be terrible when the crowds move in.
So we made our way through the throng through a series of increasingly expensive fashion and handbag shops normally found only in Airport Terminals until we found the Rialto Bridge. Try getting a photo of that without a Gondola in it.
But the best thing about the Rialto Bridge is the adjacent ferry terminal -$15 Euro’s and 15 minutes later we were back at the hotel for drinks and dinner. Here is Jo enjoying her ‘poor mans Gondola ride’ home.
