Pavia-ed Paradise and Put Up a Museum

After our spur of the minute decision to go to Milan yesterday, today the plan was a much more reasonable visit to Pavia where we were parked anyway. We ditched our bikes and donned only a t-shirt (it was 21 degrees!!) and wandered into town.

Starting the day off strong with a wander over the medieval bridge into Pavia. The pre-medieval bridge was Roman and stood just upstream of the new-er bridge. You can see its remnants in the water breaking on the foundations in this photo.

Once into the city properly we went meandering around the streets and courtyards, accidentally happening upon this beautiful university courtyard. Nottingham campus was nice but I'd have loved studying here, were it not for the lack of people speaking English...

Right at the far side of Pavia we went into what started as an amazing museum situated in the old castle. Much of the painted interior walls were adorned with beautiful paintings such as this dragon eating a man with 2 partially on fire sticks holding buckets. I can't remember all of the reasoning for this but lets be honest who needs a reason to put this on a wall! Regrettably the expensive 'everywhere access pass' that we bought inexplicably did not give us access to the 500 year anniversary of the Battle of Pavia, a fact I was somewhat perturbed about

Walking back after a fairly short visit we decided to take a break before moving on and came down to the river Ticino (taking its name from Roman Pavia's name or visa versa, who knows ay?) for a bit of a read and what must be our hundredth focaccia.

A little ways down the road we decided on a nature park up tonight by the river Po, a river we will be encountering much more on our way back up the east coast of Italy in a few weeks time. Time for a not all that deserved chill day tomorrow by the banks of the Po before a drive down to Genoa on Friday.

Danni's fact of the day: in Roman burials, oil lamps were placed upside down in the grave to signify the end of light (a symbol of life)

Rob's fact of the day: Roman burials were mostly cremations until after they conquered the north province of modern Pavia where they adopted inhumation (casket burials) from the conquered locals