ROAD TRIP TO PAVIA!

Monday, 27 January 2020

Before reliving the day's adventure and this season's first road trip, we need to check out the response in Italy to the shocking news of Kobe Bryant's tragic death.

Italy took his death hard

Besides being a basketball loving country in general, Italy has a special relationship with Kobe Bryant, his family and his youth.

Kobe's father, Joe, was also an NBA player. When Joe's NBA career ended, he moved his family to Italy to play in the Italian league for another seven years.

At the time of the move to Italy, Kobe was just six years old and over the course of his Dad's final playing days he learned to speak fluent Italian and fall in love with the Italian culture.

Thus, besides his obvious basketball skills, Kobe gained further notoriety in Italy because of his ability to give the occasional interview in near perfect Italian.

It sounds to me as if Italy and Kobe had a beautiful ongoing love affair over the many years.

Meanwhile . . .

As for me, I felt that it was time to take a road trip via train using my travel pass that is good for all types of public transportation in the region of Lombardia.

Today's city . . .

Pavia

I had visited this charming city two years ago and I felt that it deserved further exploration.

Pavia, population 72,000, was founded by the Romans as a military garrison more than 2,000 years ago.

Pavia is a college town whose historic university was founded in the 14th-century.

 In memory of two Sicilian

judges who fought against, and

were eventually executed by, the Mafia

 Pavia is full of interesting

statues and architecture

The 15th-century

Palazzo Carminali Bottigella

It is built of brick with stunning terra-cotta designs added which display Renaissance designs.

A closer look at the terra-cotta designs

And a much closer look

The Palazzo is a solid,

cool looking edifice

Down the same street I

found this brick tower

Also from the 15th-century,

it is the Torre Bottigella

I'm not sure that I like the stucco that at some point was added to the lower half of the Torre.

A CHURCH!

I don't recall having entered a church in the past two weeks.

I was due.

It was the

Chiesa Santa Maria del Carmine

I entered.

St. Christopher fresco

St. Peter of Verona with

his usual meat cleaver in his head

What price martyrdom?

Colorful side chapel

I liked the 3-D crowns on

Mary and Jesus

St. Onofrio

Is that a fur Speedo he's wearing?

Why is this man smiling?

Beats me?

Lots of frescoes in this church

to be sure

These silver busts of prominent

Popes and Cardinals are popular

in Catholic Churches all over Italy

Is that the Sforza family snake

crest at the bottom?

I was hungry but had not found a place yet that caught my eye for lunch.

 Now I had!

This is a Spanish fast-food tapas chain that is both inexpensive and good.

I felt like a break from tomato based sauces with pasta, so this worked for me.

So did the glass of refreshing Tinto de Verano.

I was ready to move on to view more of Pavia's sights.

 Pavia's Duomo

Work on this Duomo began in 1488 at a site that was previously occupied by two medieval churches.

It was closed for lunch.

The Piazza in front of the Duomo

No clue as to who this man

on horseback might be 

Another view of the Duomo

Random religious street art

 How old are these bricks?

Probably not as old as this

Duomo window

Same Duomo but from its

rear side

The Piazza della Vittoria

on the back side of the Duomo

This piazza had an

ice skating rink . . .

. . . with so-so skaters

Leonardo da Vinci

First-century Roman Emperor

Caesar Augustus

  

 Nice architecture

Pavia's version of soccer hooligans

What if this archway

could tell us what it's seen?

Pavia's covered bridge

spanning the River Ticino

 A look inside the same bridge

There's the Duomo again

in the distance

I wonder if it will re-open later today?

A one-time doctor's home?

 The entryway to Pavia's

famed university

This university's roots date back to 1361!

There are currently 20,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students attending this historic university.

Who are those two gentlemen portrayed on either side of the entrance?

 A King and . . .

. . . another important man

The Halls of Knowledge

 A statue to honor Pavia alumnus

Alessandro Volta

Volta was the inventor of the electric battery.

Honoring Pavia Faulty and

Alumni who have died defending

their country over the centuries

Honoring the students and faculty

who died due to their beliefs and

morals during WWII

 Another of many tributes

to the luminaries who have

walked these hallowed halls

Paying attention

 Getting bored

The grounds of Pavia's university are interesting to be sure but it was time to move on.

How old is this massive door?

No, NOT a church

I'm sure that at one time it probably was at least a chapel but today it is a book store.

It was getting close to the time for me to leave Pavia as I still had about a two and a half hour trip home via two trains and a bus.

Still, I wandered back to the Duomo one last time to see if it was finally open.

It was!

Laurie would have loved this

The Duomo's interior was nice but nothing out of the Italian ordinary thus the paucity of photos.

At happens from time to time, this cathedral was much more interesting from the outside.

When I finally returned to the Villa Scorpion II, son Michael had sent me the following article from the Newbury Park H.S. student newspaper.

Mike and a fellow teacher Rich Bradley

coach special needs students at NPHS 

to enjoy the unifying aspects

of playing different sports

I for one and extremely proud of Mike's efforts in this worthwhile endeavor.