After catching a 4.15 a.m. bus and suffering the long tedious slog through airport, flight and arrival airport my holiday started around lunchtime here in Treviso.  There's nothing very special about this part of the town but the photo shows the typical arcaded streets that offer shelter from sun and rain with a hint of a square seen through the arches on the right. The beautiful roadway is made from their equivalent of our setts.  The setts are smaller than ours, square rather than rectangular and generally laid out in a non linear pattern, often fan shaped. 

I'd arrived before a hotel room was ready for me so I dumped my bag and wandered off to find lunch which sadly was a fairly nondescript plate of cold meat and salad.  But it provided enough fuel for me to get back to the hotel, now ready for me, and change into lighter clothing.  For it was hot, as it continued consistently to be until I got back to Edinburgh where to be fair it was pretty warm.

Anyway I spent the rest of that first day getting acquainted with Treviso.  It's a lovely place, not too big, not too busy, not a tourist magnet but with sufficient points of interest to be, in the famous Michelin phrase, worth a detour.  The town walls for instance.  They extend along

most of three sides of the central area of the town.  There are some fine churches, a few museums, markets and pleasant spots in which to pause. 

The next day I went to Vicenza, slightly by default.  I intended to go to Venice but thanks to machine problems and ticket office queues I decided to take the next train out and so bought a ticket to Vicenza via the Trainline app.

What a lovely day resulted.  The town is beautiful.  Reading The Rough Guide on the train I learnt about its connection with Palladio and about the oldest indoor theatre in Europe which lies at the end of the Corso Palladio, the main street.  So I made a dash for that on arrival.  It's really a Roman theatre with its standard highly decorated permanent background with its three doors brought indoors.  It looks bowed out in my photo but it's not in fact. Panorama shot effect.

After that visit which included a bit of a sound and light show I wandered back up the Corso and off many side streets admiring the buildings and public spaces.

On the next day (Sunday) I was going to buy a ticket online again but decided I should really be taking every opportunity to speak Italian so I queued up at the station and asked for a ticket to Trieste saying that I would be coming back later in the day but didn't know exactly when.  The agent said that would cost me €30 but for €29 she could sell me a ticket  which I could use on any train (except some high speed services) as often as I liked over the next three days.  No brainer. 

So I set off to Trieste.  There were lovely mountain views for most of the way replaced by lovely views of the sea in the last half-hour or so.  On arrival I decided it being hot and steamy to try to find the seaside.  Several buses claimed to be heading for the Castello di Miramare which sounded just the ticket.

Unfortunately they wouldn't sell me a ticket on the bus.  Smartphones were mentioned but I didn't grasp quite what the driver was on about.  There being no open shops in the vicinity I sat in a bus shelter and investigated (thankyou smartphone).  The SMS suggestion didn't prove fruitful. Next option, download the Trieste transport app.  Once downloaded you have to register as a user, providing all sorts of extraneous data.  That involves responding to a link sent by email.

Now we're ready.  I'll go for the €3 day ticket.  Wait.  My card issuer wants to protect me from the possibility that I'm about to be scammed out of €3 so we go through the one-time passcode text routine.  Finally I get on the bus and squeeze through the crowd of beachgoers to push my phone up against a QR code to validate my ticket.  Phew.

I say beachgoers but in the 5 mile stretch of Miramare this is the biggest bit of beach that I could see.

But the whole stretch serves as a place to take the sun, relax, picnic and slip into the sea.  It was packed.

There is one spot called Pineta di Barcola which I saw from the bus that is a wood laid out with kids' playgrounds and such that looked really good.

Anyway the bus stopped about a mile before the castle.  I walked on and got to the car-park within the grounds but was damned if I could be bothered to go all the way.  You can see from this Wikipedia entry that it's well worth a visit but for me that will have to wait.  I trudged back to the bus-stop with a cool drink pause en route and caught a bus back into the city centre.

The centre is all grand buildings and wide streets reflecting one period of its long history.   I got off somewhere and wandered towards the sea coming across the statue of James Joyce in the process. Famously he taught English here and lived for years in the city having got away from Pula, of which more later.

In approximately this area I was absurdly excited to hear Japanese being spoken.  I heard and recognised the language before seeing the speakers. It was a family or group of friends sitting chatting in a cafe.  Could be me one day (I hope).

I did a bit of sitting without chatting but imbibing before catching a bus back to the station. In the underpass leading there from the bus-stop somebody shouted after me.  I ignored it of course but as I went up the steps a youngish man came abreast of me.  He offered me sex.  I fell about laughing I'm afraid.

Masks were still obligatory on public transport and on the train home two young men were ejected (safely at a station) for not wearing them.  They must have put a hex on the train because it broke down later on.  I suppose the wait for another one was about half an hour.  No great sweat.  

I went to Venice the next day later than planned because the train I expected to catch only runs at weekends so it was pretty well lunchtime till I got there.  I decided it was too hot to focus on contemporary art so I spent the day pottering about on the vaporetti.  I had an excellent lunch at a restaurant that I hope to be able to find again.  Their terrace was full but a waiter set up a chair for me to wait and gave me a glass of prosecco to wait with.  It reminded me of being given something to drink when Claire and I were in a queue for a restaurant in Buenos Aires.  Very civilised.  When I did eat it was delicious.  I had a tender cuttlefish salad and fish filled ravioli washed down with a wine whose name I forget.

I checked out how to get to San Basilio where I'll be catching the ferry to Pula on Friday.

When I got back to Treviso in the evening I was able to watch Andy Murray's first round match on Sky Sports in the hotel.  A very satisfactory day.

On Tuesday an early start to get to Padua.  I'd bought a time slot ticket to see the Giotto frescoes online following the guide book and the website's imprecations about the impossibility of buying a ticket on the day.  This turned out to be nonsense by the way, but like a number of systems I dealt with in Italy you don't actually get a ticket online.  You get a code number or a QR code that you subsequently have to present to a machine or a human being to get a physical ticket. What is the point?

It took me a while to find the Scrovegni Chapel and when I did find the grounds I had to walk the whole way round to find the entry to the Chapel itself, annoying and hot work.  This was me getting my ticket to be used later in the day.  I had a wee daunder round the museum which had lots of nice stuff in it.  I bought some postcards but I didn't have a pen, nor surprisingly did the gift shop.  They had some pretty little notebooks though so I bought one of those on the assumption that it would come in handy.

I then headed off to town to fill in some time before my date with the frescoes.  I got myself a Bic pen for a euro in a tabaccheria (and subsequently passed a pen shop where one euro wouldn't get you a drop of ink) and a cheap umbrella (rain was forecast for later but when it came it was only a few spits).

The last thing these fragile frescoes need is a crowd of hot tourists giving off sweaty fumes so you have to spend time in an air-conditioned chamber before you get your 15 minutes in the presence.  It's an educational wait.  They show a video about the frescoes.  The wait turns out to be well worthwhile because the frescoes arre stunning.  They certainly rival Michelangelo's work in the Sistine Chapel.

Here are my snaps but you'll get a better idea of the beauty of the work if you google "scrovegni chapel frescoes".

I had lunch then in the museum cafeteria.  I ate a delicious black rice salad and by a happy misunderstanding was served two Aperol spritzes.  Not for the price of one alas.

In the grounds there are various bits of art that I wandered amongst before going back into the town centre for more wandering. Some examples

Back to town for some more sightseeing I came across the Cafe Pedrocchi which is historically, architecturally and intellectually one of the most important places in Padua.  It also serves delicious snacks, viz

And on the particular day I was there there were a couple of celebrations going on.  This girl complete with laurel wreath, symbol of triumph borrowed by the Romans from the Greeks, was there with friends and family to celebrate her graduation (laurea in Italian) in medicine in the 800th anniversary year of Padua University.

That was about it.  I headed back to Treviso and watched Rafa at Wimbledon.

The following morning I felt like a break from intensive sightseeing.  I had a leisurely breakfast, took my coffee out to the little seating area in front of the hotel and wrote my postcards.  Later in the day the very pleasant lady in a tabaccheria who sold me stamps insisted on positioning the large stamps accurately on the postcards and came out onto the pavement to show me the nearest postbox.

I had a bit of a toddle around town and went to an exhibition of the work of Cleto Murani called L'Ossessione della Bellezza.  As we all know beauty is in the eye of the beholder so I'll let you judge with a few pics.  Let's start with this image plucked from a video.

I like the cravate but I'm not sure that the eating irons in the breast pocket show an obsession with beauty.  His work is quite fun though.

The place I stopped at for lunch had a large selection of salads named after authors (and maybe characters as well, I forget).  I chose an Agatha Christie.  Presumably because it was composed of ingredients that I liked though I've forgotten them as well except for one.  This appeared to be croutons but burnt to a cinder croutons that were nonetheless still in one piece.  As coke is to coal so this stuff was to bread.  Definitely a mystery ingredient befitting the name of the dish.

It came on to rain as I was finishing my lunch so I was grateful for the protection of the little umbrella I'd bought the previous day as I made my way back to the hotel where I spent the rest of the day watching Raducanu and Murray lose their respective matches.

No rest for the sightseer the next day.  Off to Verona, which town I was lately the provost of on the Edinburgh stage.  The station is a wee bit of a hike from the town centre but I bought a traditional paper bus ticket valid for the day from a shop in the station and hopped on whatever number my guide-book said I should.

It's pretty easy to decide when you've reached the town.  Where else can it be but by the arena.

For those exhausted by the effort of getting there or just lazy there's a satisfyingly long parade of cafes just opposite in which to while away a while or so while considering the next move.

My next move was to circumnavigate the arena.  Famous for its use as an opera stage its scenery dock seemed to be the surrounding street which was full of Egyptian gods and other operatic riff-raff.

I contemplated going inside the arena but there was pretty big queue and to be honest when you've been in one Roman arena you've been in them all.  The design is standard though the dimensions differ.  There was also too big a queue for the town tour bus for my taste so I did my own tour through some central streets and along the banks of the Adige on shanks' pony  before collapsing at a table with this fine view and a cooling drink or two.  It was very hot.  According to my phone it was 32°, feels like 37° and that's certainly how it felt to me.

Once recovered I used my invaluable bus ticket to work my way back to the station where I caught a train to Treviso.

Next day was my day for moving to Croatia but first there was the small matter of the Venice Biennale.  I got down to Venice smartly, dumped my luggage at a place in the Piazzale Roma that I'd sussed out earlier in the week and caught a vaporetto to Giardini where I joined a ticket office queue knowing as I explained earlier that there was no point in buying online since I'd still have had to queue to collect the ticket.

Supposed to open at 10.00 it seemed they were having a long lie today and would open at 11.00.  I repaired to a cafe to fume with a coffee.  When the office did open I did more fuming because a woman a few punters ahead of me spent an inordinate time at the window.  There was much consulting of phones and notebooks and parleying with the agent within and handing over of babies to a companion.  Ultimately she moved off clutching a bunch of tickets 3 or 4 inches deep. I assume she was a travel agent or tour guide or something but really they should have a window dedicated to group sales and let the individual visitor buy their ticket promptly.

Once in I loved it but saw only a fraction.  I'm very tempted to go back for a couple of days later in the year to revisit and to use the Arsenale section of my ticket because I didn't have time to go there.  I'm just going to post a few pictures and let you share what I saw without comment.  I will tell you one amusing detail.  Outside the Japanese pavilion was a notice apologising for the fact that their installation wasn't working properly. How could you tell I wondered when I saw it.    

After all of this and much more I hurried back to collect my luggage and get to San Basilio to catch the ferry to Pula and at about 17.15 we headed down the Giudecca canal and through the lagoon into the Adriatic.