Padua, I'm Glad I Met Ya

Back during the planning stages of this trip, I knew we were going to Milan (the free hotel was in Milan, so that was automatic) and Venice (the most unique city in the world).  But I also follow a number of Twitter accounts dedicated to showing beautiful architecture, landscapes, history, and travel.

I saw a beautiful photo of Padua, did some quick research, and learned that not only is it in-between Venice and Milan, it’s only 14 minutes from Venice.  The same Twitter-based serendipity led me to add Verona to the list (my Italian geographic awareness is not high) a few days later.  

Getting out of Venice isn’t that easy.  We walked to the water taxi docks near the Doge’s Palace and took a water taxi to the train station.  We decided it was a better option than a vaporetto, because there would not be additional stops in-between the Plaza San Marco and the St. Lucia train station.

For some reason, the website for Trenitalia would not sell us tickets to Padua from St. Lucia station.  Instead I had to buy tickets from Venice Mestre, which, unbeknownst to me, is much harder to get to than the St. Lucia station.  So I resigned myself to buying a pair of tickets for the five minute ride from St. Lucia to Mestre, consoling myself with two facts.

The first is that the added tickets would be dirt cheap.  The second fact is that it’s typical Italian inefficiency that would not let me buy tickets from St. Lucia.  I’m sure there’s a way, but it wasn’t readily apparent whilst I was on the website from Alexandria, VA.

So Carol and I popped into the ticket office to buy the tickets, because we couldn’t make heads nor tails of the automated ticket dispenser.  We met a kind man, told him what we needed.  He took our original tickets, wrote something on one, and then sent us away, no charge.

It was not the last time that day we faced a challenging issue with a website that sells tickets to what we needed.  (Hint to readers: Big-time foreshadowing!) 

Once we got to Padua, it was a nice walk of nearly a mile from the train station to our hotel.  It was too early to check in, but we were able to leave our bags and head off to explore Padua.