Chasing the sun, Mon, 20 Sep 2021 | written by Simon
Jemma and Simon at a Castle, City, Temple, UNESCO site in Europe, Italy

Waiting overnight to walk around the walls was totally worth it. Fantastic views of town, the mountains around, seeing the town change from every angle… Great stuff. Annoyingly, all the information plates that tell you about the town and the walls were at the very end – would have been nice to read them at the start!

It took us a bit over an hour to walk around and soon we were off to Casteldefranco – another walled town which was also part of Venice’s sphere of influence and served as a fortress in its wars, By the way, both towns have St Mark’s all over the place, as did Padua and Vicenza – you can tell that Venice likes waving it’s huge golden dick around a lot.

If Citadella seemed tiny, Casteldefranco is just minuscule. Most of the walls are destroyed, so we couldn’t walk them, but I doubt it would take 15 minutes to do the round trip. Instead, we went to a nice church which holds a great painting by Giogrione who was from here, then didn’t go to Giorgione’s museum as it was closed. Instead, we sneaked into a music school which is based in a nice building just by one corner of the walls.

After a delicious iced coffee, we moved on to Villa Emo, another of Palladio’s. It is really delightful and beautifully frescoed. Importantly, it is not Baroquen! It’s also completely unfinished on the back – there is no facade, it looks like a run down tenament. It’s also a fair bit smaller than we expected from the model we saw in Palladio’s museum, to be honest. A bit of a budget villa, it seems!

By the way, it’s great to be out of the beaten track. The contrast between Venice and Padua or Vicenza is huge in terms of tourists. But the little towns and villas seem just completely empty. It’s nice to have space.

On the way to our next destination we had to make an important stop: a shower. We found a great looking outdoors swimming pool in Montebeluna and drove towards it. On the way, we checked out a neo-gothic cathedral the size of which seems to greately exceed the needs of such a small town. It was pretty impressive though, with great stained glass and a very interesting cyborium. We were about to see it a few more times, as it turned out…

When we arrived to the pool, it turned out that it’s closed for the winter and only the gym is open. Disappointed, we quickly found another one we could go to. Naturally, it was on the other side of town, so we drove all the way back right by the cathedral, only to find out that this pool is open, but only for kids classes. They wouldn’t even let us just use the showers. With tension building, we found a wellness spa which was once again on the other side of town, so we drove by the cathedral yet again, only to find out that the minimum time we can get in for is four hours and it costs 45 Euro. I think we must have looked pretty desperate, as they took pity on us and just let us use the showers for free. Thank you!!!

Refreshed, we drove by the cathedral one last time on our way to Valdobbadiene, the last of Prosecco! It was great to see more and more vineyards appear both on flat ground and on hills that started appearing as were were driving North towards the Alps. We drove around a bit admiring the views and decided to try find a parking spot by a church sat atop of a hill overlooking the town. The drive up there made us appreciate the Baron even more than usual – a super steep road with lots of gravel and turns… We had to do most of it on the first gear and even that seemed like it won’t be enough – but the Baron made it!

We parked and strolled down with a backpack full of electronics in need of charging, hoping to find a bar that will feed them electricity and us Prosecco. We walked about the tiny town centre and decided on a bar by the main square. The lady there proved to be really wonderful – not only did she let us charge everything, she also recommended really nice drinks and even fed us a little for free, to make sure we won’t suffer too much from all the Prosecco and spritzes we had!

By the time we were leaving, it was properly raining. And we had quite a trek back up the hill! We got there completely drenched, running on Prosecco and still very happy. Oh, we will sleep well tonight!