St Anthony and the Auto-Grill

This morning we left Venice to drive to Padua, home of Saint Anthony. The basilica there is huge and gorgeous. It has domes and cupolas and a beautiful cloister. We celebrated mass in a chapel adjacent to the cloister, which was simple but adorned with medieval frescos. Daily mass in these sacred spaces is such an important part of the pilgrimage experience.

The weather was perfect with blue sky and warm sunshine in the plaza in front of the basilica. Tricia was reprimanded and got her hand slapped away when she tried to pet the dog that approached her in the picture. We're not sure if the surly Italian women was warning Tricia that her dog might bite or if she just didn't appreciate being surrounded by all of us Americans.

I have to say that we are a group of happy, peppy pilgrims. We are having so much fun! After leaving Padua, we drove to a place in Bologna for lunch. It was a actually a truck stop called the "Auto-Grill," but it's nothing like a truck stop in the United States. It had fabulous salads, a full pasta bar, and several meat-and-potatoes entrees. Oh, and let's not forget the wine. We learned the difference between a 1/4 liter and a half bottle (375 milliliters) with the half bottle being slightly bigger. And the selection was impressive -- chianti, sangiovese, and montepulciano to name a few Italian reds. 

We learned from our tour guide that it's "disgusting" to drink "caffe" with a meal, so after lunch, we adjourned to the downstairs coffee bar to get our "caffe machiatos caldo" (espresso with hot milk) -- and that's when the fun began. (Well, we thought it was fun, but Father Nathan and our tour guide seemed pretty frazzled.) It turns out there were two coffee bars, and we went to the one on the wrong side of the freeway. Let's just say that some of us got lost and ended up delaying the bus by more than a few minutes.

Eventually we arrived at our next destination, Montecatini Terme, a small spa town in Tuscany. This will our home base for the next two days as we explore Florence and Siena.