Travels in Italy 2019

My third city in Italy, Treviso is very near Venice, about a 30 minute train ride, +/- depending on how many local stops it makes.  I stayed here after reading a New York Times article about using Treviso as a base to visit Venice.  So far, so good! Treviso is also a city of canals, but of a different sort than that in Venice.  Treviso's canals are the results of diversions of rivers and streams, so the water is fairly fast moving, at least this time of year.  The original purpose was (probably, I'm improvising here) to drive water wheels to perform various sorts of work (grinding flour, running machines, etc.).  It makes for a picturesque city. My Airbnb is immediately adjacent to one of these canals, and there's a water wheel right outside my window.  The sounds of fast flowing water can be very soothing, even if it is quite loud (closing the windows cuts out almost all of that).  There are other side-effects.  Since the weather has been w...

So, as usual, I have a few thoughts and observations about travel in Italy as I encounter situations.  These are things that mostly are different from how they are at home in the USA. Credit cards and cash.  People here still use cash for many transactions with small amounts (unlike the US where cash seems to be a dying payment method).  Get a caffè for 1 euro, leave a coin.  But when it comes to credit cards, the Italians have moved up a step.  While in the US, we just got the chip cards rolled out (mostly), the Italians have had contactless cards for a while now.  A contactless credit card is one you can just tap against the machine to make the charge.  This is like Apple Pay, Google Wallet, etc., but embedded in the credit card itself.  But it also works with those other payment methods.  I don't think I've had to actually take my credit card out of my pocket to pay since I got here.  I just use my iPhone with Apple Pay, or just us...

The next city in my excursion was Padua ("was" because I'm now in Treviso).  Padua was quite a bit larger than I expected; bigger than Verona.  It had a sizable shopping district with many high-end stores (including Hermès). But the reason I visited Padua (Padova in Italian) was to see the Scrovegni Chapel (Cappella degli Scrovegni, aka the Arena Chapel) and the amazing frescoes painted by Giotto.  Scrovegni was a wealthy banker who decided to exhibit his wealth in architecture.  He purchased land occupied by a Roman arena (hence Arena Chapel) and build a huge palazzo for himself and family.  All wealthy families needed a church as well, so he built the chapel and hired Giotto to decorate the interior.  Giotto and 40 assistants worked on the chapel from March 1303 to March 1305. The Scrovegni Chapel from the window of my Airbnb Against an agreement with the neighboring Church of the Eremitani and its Augustinian monks, Scrovegni apparently added a...

Well, I survived the marathon flight from Seattle to Toronto to Milan on Air Canada.  Leaving Seattle at the ungodly hour of 7:00am and arriving in Toronto 2:30pm EDT, followed by an 8 hour layover before the next flight left Toronto for Milan.  All the flights were smooth and without incident (upgraded to first class Seattle to Toronto, then business class with a lay-flat seat Toronto to Milan).  Still it was a very long 24 hours between leaving Kirkland and arriving in Milan at the Airbnb. The Airbnb apartment is very nice, in the Brera district of Milan.  Tons of great restaurants, bakeries, gelato places, etc., very near here. On my first day of walking around I noticed that Milan, and Italy in general, still has small shopkeepers doing their specialty thing.  Yes, there are large stores (e.g., Rinascente, which is Italy's Bloomingdale's).  But by and large, you see small shops that attempt to do one thing very well.  They will sell and spe...