We drop Kelly and Marji off at the Florence train station first. The photo at the right is us outside of the train station. They take a train to Rome to catch their flights home. Meanwhile, the rest of the gang leave Florence and head for Pavia.
Pavia
September 5 - 6, 1998
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We load up the cars and get ready to depart the villa. Edwardo looks over a map for someplace for us to stay for the evening that is close to Milan and our flights home the following day. He picks Pavia out of the air as it seems close to Milan, but far enough away to perhaps be a quaint town in its own right. |
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We drop Kelly and Marji off at the Florence train station first. The photo at the right is us outside of the train station. They take a train to Rome to catch their flights home. Meanwhile, the rest of the gang leave Florence and head for Pavia. |
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Bologna
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The drive includes some beautiful country and wild weather conditions. Above Florence, we head into a mountain range as it starts to rain. The rain comes so hard at one time, the traffic comes to a standstill for 15 minutes. Coming down the mountains towards Bologna however, the rain gives in to bright sunshine. We stop in Bologna, dubbed the cuisine capital of Italy by some, for a lunch of McDonalds. We eat our burgers and fries in the cars in the town square and then hit the road again. |
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Pavia
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None of us knew a thing about Pavia. Picking this city to stay at this evening was an absolutely blind choice. Looked close to the Milan airport where we flew out the following morning, but perhaps small and local enough to be a great find. After coming down from the mountains from Tuscany to Bologna, the drive became straight forward. Under a sunny sky we paralleled the mountains in a Northwest direction up towards Milan and Pavia. We got to Pavia around 5pm and started looking for a hotel. While hunting around for the hotel however, Pavia was not exactly looking like the happening town. Known for nothing in particular and with no significant architectural or geographical significance, the town was not really making fans with anyone. When the hotel search turned up only one hotel with funky 70s furnishings and a view that overlooked the long since abandoned factory, the girls started labeling the city with "third world" status. With little choice, we took the hotel. At that point, C, Christine and chatty Kathy decided that they were going to take off. Since they were not flying out the next day, they took off in the Alpha for Northern Italy's lake district. The rest of us checked in. Shortly after nightfall, with expectations low the rest of the gang (Chris, Shannon, Sylvia, Dave, Rhonda, Colleen and Edwardo) headed out to find some food and check out Pavia. One bonus was that the hotel was within walking distance from the center of town. We were quickly walking the quiet streets looking for a good place to eat when we discovered another pleasant surprise - a great restaurant off of an apparently unused alley. Despite a staff that knew no English and our stumbling Italian, we were able to order a fantastic dinner and again hit the bottles of Barolo and Barbaresco. After dinner we return to the streets of Pavia and it is now packed with people. It seems that everyone in town is out for a walk or to hang out and party in the streets. In our walk, we come across the town square - a large open area bound by ancient buildings - which at this point is teeming with people hanging out talking, smoking and drinking. We go to McDonalds to get some beer, get a table outside and take it all in. |
Central Pavia on the right of the river (above)
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Later in the evening and after many drinks we walk from the town square back to the hotel. On the way Sylvie just happens to relieve herself on an alley right under some graffiti that says, quite by coincidence, "SSylvie". The trip back to the hotel is a peaceful summer late night walk that takes us past some of the more interesting sights of Pavia. The old buildings in the center of town, over the railroad tracks, past the silent, spooky abandoned factory, over the railroad tracks carrying overnight passenger trains and over the dark river. Pavia has grown on me - a normal, everyday European town with a pulse of its own. After the much hyped locations of Tuscany, Paris, Monaco, Florence, an unusual but welcome place to spend on our last night in EuroRanch. We wake up the next morning, go to the airport and fly home. Well, Edwardo does get his backpack stolen by some Pavia slime right from under him while we're packing the van, but I won't go into that as it's a downer way to end the story. |
At this point, the square is rocking, it's a nice warm night, I have my beer and Pavia is definitely looking better. Dave, Rhonda, Sylvia, Shannon and I hit an Irish bar at the South end of the square by the old church. The pub is also rocking so we sit at the bar and order drinks. We keep the drinks flowing all night until Sylvie is so drunk she tries to kiss the bartender while leaning over the bar flirting with him.
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