Italy Top to Toe – Padua

The holiday club all wanted to visit Venice so the plans began with an expectation that we would be spending four days in the famous waterlogged city but during the search for suitable accommodation it soon became clear that the price of hotels was some way beyond our normal hotel room skinflint budget so I started to look for alternatives and very soon found something suitable in nearby Padova.

It was a late flight so we landed in the dark at nine o’clock and the first job was to arrange the transport so I asked at the public transport desk to be told that there were no buses directly to Padova and we would need a bus to the Venetian mainland suburb of Mestre where we could catch a train.  This turned out to be a pack of lies because there was a bus service to Padova at a third of the price but handing out this duff advice was a Ryanair partner bus company so not knowing any better we fell for the trick.

Apart from the additional cost this didn’t inconvenience us too greatly and soon we were at the train station and buying our tickets but after we found the platform with minutes to spare before the scheduled departure there was then a twenty-five minute delay to the service which meant that we were going to be arriving in Padova too late to be able to find somewhere to eat.

The train journey took about thirty minutes and after we arrived in the city we immediately located our hotel, which was excellent but had no restaurant or bar and the streets outside in contrast to the hotel appeared run down and inhospitable with danger and suspicion lurking in the shadows of every doorway and street corner so we decided against a midnight walk and went straight to our rooms.

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