Saturday June 26, 2004, 77 km (48 miles) – Total so far: 145 km (90 miles)

We passed through Padova today, stopping for lunch in a café opposite the duomo. Padova is very beautiful but I’m sure it must lose out tourism-wise being only 20km from Venice. The area between the two cities was very built up and not great for cycling, Padova to Vicenza was more rural and closer to how I imagined this area of Italy.

The Vicenza campsite is about 5km from the city centre and is the sort frequented by tourists who are ‘passing through’, it has great facilities but you wouldn’t want to spend your whole holiday here. We saw our first fellow cycle tourists today, Germans, we rode the last few km to the campsite with them.

Padova

Central Padova

Our route to Vicenza is nice and flat, mostly farmland

Camping Vicenza, nice campsite, good facilities – shame about the noise from the motorway