Milan

The cool and foggy weather continued for the rest of our stay in Italy. The thick fog would roll in and stay until midday or later then perhaps the sun would shine or sometimes it would be overcast.  The land from Venice to Milan was as flat at a billiard table so cycling was easy as we rode beside canals through fields recently ploughed for the winter planting.

We stopped at Padua for a day. Padua is a university city full of young people and at night time the streets are full of people eating in outside cafes, much too cold for us to do this but it is a way of life here. We walked around the cobbled streets and visited St Anthony’s basilica which is a magnificent building with frescoes on the ceiling and many statues.  It is a place of pilgrimage, visited by many people hoping to be cured of an illness.

After leaving Padua we found a cycle track well away from the road which took us beside a canal for about 10 klms to the town of Este where there was a market where we bought lunch before continuing on the walled city of Montagnana.  The wall is well preserved and within lies shops, a 500 year old church and a few houses, no tourists as the season is over.

Our route took us through Montova, Cremona and Ponte Adda, then we reached Milan where we were warmly greeted by Sandy a Derek, our warm shower hosts.  They are a young couple come from USA and are in Milan for Derek’s work, we really enjoyed our time with them.  Derek has ridden across USA and we were interested to hear about it.  We needed to book a train to Paris and Sandy helped, going to the railway station with us speaking Italian to the railway people.  The news was not good. Fast trains do not take bikes, so we booked two suburban trains which do to take us to the border of France where we would have to book a train to Paris as we could not do it in Italy.  We said goodbye to Sandy and Derek and caught the train to Ventimelia.