Festive and Dreary p33

Some Building

I have no idea what it is, but it was in Vicenza, and Mom took a pretty picture of it. I think it was real near the church.



After the Festival

This was the street that lead up to the Teatro Olimpico. Apparently there had been a festival in Vicenza, because there were flags hanging across the street everywhere. It was real fun-looking. The weather was really crummy, though. If I had another go-around, I would have visited all the little towns around vicenza. Lots of wineries, and tons of villas designed by Palladio.



The basilica that wasn't a church

Usually a basilica is what they call the cathedral-type churches in Italy. I know there's a distinction to what is actually called a cathedral, chapel, basilica, church, etc. but I don't remember. As we walked through Vicenza, we were looking all around the shopping square for the basilica, a church. But it turned out that we were IN the basilica ... the outdoor shopping mall. Interesting, really. (this is a picture of it)

Even more interesting ... After visiting the Teatro Olimpico, we decided to eat lunch somewhere ... but I wanted a nice cozy non-wet or cold venue. We ended up on the other side of this building, at a little pub/pizzeria. It was quite empty when we went in (we were the only ones there.) This was pretty normal wherever we ate, because the Americans we are, ate lunch at 12 instead of 2 and dinner at 7 instead of 9. There were these huge booths and beer paraphenalia plastered all over the walls. The pizza was pretty good, and a party of young career people occupied the booth behind us after a while, and a couple of old women kept themselves good company at a nearby table. We tried to finish up lunch really quickly, because it was our goal to take the train back to Padua at a certain time (or we would have to wait another hour or two.) I didn't realize until too late, that my pickiness about the venue caused us to be short on time.

After a hurried lunch, we asked the waiter how long it would take to get back to the train station. He didn't understand English. Finally, using fingers, we realized he was saying 10 min. We only had 15 min before the next train left (and we didn't have our tickets yet). We didn't know how to get back to the train station, though. We asked non-English speaking waiter this, too. He gave us directions in Italian. We acted like we understood, said gratzi, arrive derche, and jostled out of the pub. We prettymuch jogged the whole wayto the train station. I'm sure we looked pretty goofy rushing so fast. Mom did a great job keeping up, by the way. We weaved through lots of tourists and a large crowd of students, praying that it didn't start pouring down on us. We finally got to the station, waited impatiently at the ticket counter (at this point it was 5 in till the train departed.) We got the tickets, found out which platform, and ran to catch the train as the loud speaker was announcing something in Italian about the train we were planning on catching. You have to time-stamp your tickets there by running them through this little machine (half of which are usually broken.) I grabbed the tickets, and punched them as mom ran in front of me to the train. She got on, I was approaching. The doors of the train were closing, and she was still reaching out to grab me onto the train.

These thoughts ran through my head a) what if her arm gets stuck in the door b) what if my arm gets stuck in the door and I have to ride the whole way back to padua on the outside of the train with arm stuck on the inside c) she doesn't have a ticket and there is no way to contact her if we get separated d) I don't want to wait another hour or two for the next train to padua e) I wasted all that energy running across vicenza to miss the train f) I wonder how small I'd have to get to indian-jones my way through the closing doors ... and even then, would the backpack get stuck in the doors. or could I indiana-jones the bag, too, like he does with his hat at the last moment?

As all of these thoughts (and detailed imaginative illustrations) flashed through my head all in a millisecond's time ... a man on the train, behind the doors, next to my mother shoved open the doors with much force, and swooped me into the train. Now safely on the train, with the backpack and the tickets, all I could do was collapse in laughter. We finally found some vacant seats and I think mom and I laughed the whole way back to Padua on that train.