...and Padova too!

Casey did a great job recapping Venice, but I wanted to add that we spent much of that part of our trip in a little city called Padova about 40 minutes to the west. Some of you may have heard of Padua -- this is, in fact the same city, so you can close your atlas. We were so so so lucky to have Elisa DiGiorgio (who still uses her CHB lanyard for her keys, FYI) host us at her lovely apartment. Our first day in Padova was a little walking tour. As Elisa put it, you can see everything there is to see in just about one hour. But what a lovely hour it was. The evening was capped with my first authentic gelato snack on the steps of a beautiful piazza. The experience was marred only by a brief encounter with an elderly Italian man on a bicyle who insisted on telling us the entire history of the city in Italian (despite our repeated attempts at "Io non capisco" (I do not understand) and "Parlo solo inglese" (I only speak English). Elisa also arranged some hang-out sessions for the evenings with some of her close friends from her PhD program. One of MY favorite parts was when one friend brought out his guitar. It turns out Italians love some American music, but often cannot understand the words so they just sort of guess at it phonetically. A great time was had by all.

So this post is dedicated to Elisa for showing us a GREAT time in her quaint, cobblestoned city, giving us real beds to sleep in, feeding us delicious food (if you've never tried stracciatella, go to your local Italian market and buy it!), and of course, offering us a shower in which we did not feel obligated to wear shower shoes. GRAZIE!!

After Padova/Venice we took a super fancy high speed train to Rome where we spent the last four days having a marvelous time. However the spacebar on this computer barely works and my thumb needs a break, so an update on our escapades in ancient Roma will need to wait...