With autumn well and truly under way, and with the prospect of several months of short, cold and potentially miserable winter days looming, we made a spur of the moment decision to visit the Italian city of Padua where, by spooky coincidence, one of Europe’s largest classic car shows just happened to be taking place.

Padua, as many will know, was the setting for several of Shakespeare’s plays, including The Taming of the Shrew in which the ‘hero’ makes a bit of a hash of persuading the ‘heroine’ of his good intentions.  Fortunately Denise needs no persuasion when it comes to holiday trips and even the prospect of a day spent watching me drool over exotic Italians (cars, that is) didn’t put her off the idea of a short winter break.

Our original plan to say in the heart of the city went awry when our AirBnB hosts cancelled our booking a couple of days before our departure.  Our second booking was more successful but  resulted in our accomodation being several miles off the beaten track; fortunately the local bus services were frequent and reliable – not at all what we’re used to!

Padua is an ancient university town with plenty of impressive buildings (unsuprisingly many of which are churches) and plenty to see and do.  As well as enjoying some lovely weather we managed to fit in a visit to the City’s botanic gardens, a viewing of some Giotto frescos and a trip out of town to Villa Pisano.The Auto d’Epoca show was enormous – at least as big as the Classic Car Show at the NEC and with some stunning vehicles both for sale and on show.  Inevitably most of the cars were Italian, but we did manage to find a few Triumphs among the Ferraris, Maseratis and numerous Fiats, Lancias and Alfas of all shapes and sizes.