Tuesday 21st July

Today is our last full day in Padua and we have been chilling out trying to stay chilled in the 39 degree heat. We negotiated our way on to the city tram and bus system and took the tram to St Anthony’s Basilica, in the south of Padua. This is a vast seven domed cathedral (not even counting the high spire) which we visited five years ago and were in awe of its magnitude. Today it was different, knowing what to expect and having recently seen large basilicas in Rome and elsewhere. But it is still a monumentally large cathedral with a huge number of side chapels and one very large side chapel in honour of St Anthony (who, being committed to poverty I am sure must wonder what happened to his legacy!).

Today also there was a communion service about to start which we joined in with to the end of the Gospel reading. We have worshipped in many multilingual services over the years but usually with the help of earphone translation loops in Poland, English on screen in Rwanda, Verses sung in English and Japanese in Japan, and my very average French in New Caledonia. To be in Italy with no Italian at all and no English at all in the service was hard going and we pulled out at the end of the sermon which I presume was on the Gospel for the day which was from Matthew (the only word I understood in the reading). It certainly helped me to understand why migrant churches in our parishes have different services.  To worship without meaning even in an extraordinary environment is very difficult as St Paul points out in 1 Corinthians when dealing with tongues.

Donatello’s huge bronze figures (six of them) still stand on the high altar and his amazing statue of the condotierre Gattamelata still keeps guard in the grounds of the Cathedral.

Coming out of the Cathedral we were able to join the hop on hop off bus and do the rounds of the whole city. It is a city of canals ( in one of which I observed an otter swimming) which reminds me how much of a sensation Mick Fanning’s victorious shark battle has been on BBC news…they keep replaying it day after day! The canals connect with the Adriatic and you can take a water taxi to Venice if you wish. Of course there are many other sensational and ancient churches which we could only see for short periods from the high bus eg The Chapel of San Giacomo (San Felice) – (which has five domes of its own) and  the ancient Basilica of St Sophia. The Prato della  Valle is a vast statue surrounded piazza between these two vast edifices and is apparently the largest piazza in Europe. We would love to have walked its perimeter but with no tall trees in 39degree heat that was not an option.

We trammed back to the city centre and tried to break our way into Padua University to see Galileo’s chair in the Astronomy Centre but were turned back by an armed guard who was unimpressed by my status of being an expert on Galileo having written a book on the subject!..we had to join a proper tour and there were none on offer in the time we had left. We had to be content with a seat at the Caffe Pedrochhi which opened in 1831 and became famous as the cafe that never closed its doors. It was certainly a nice place to escape from the engulfing heat for a very long lunch once again ..the gelato is to die for!

Enough is enough.. we are back in the air conditioned hotel…time for siesta.