Chronicle of Sunday 3 August

Dear parents, grandparents, friends and all the other pilgrims,

Today we woke up with renewed strength. The truth is that this business of a bed to sleep in is a great invention.

After a short but intense breakfast of sobaos, little chocolate brioches, Nesquik and coffee, we walked to the railway station, where a beautiful Frecciarossa was waiting to take us to Padua by around lunchtime. On the way to the station, we stopped at a small but lovely little chapel to make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. We were spread out across different carriages of the train, and the idea of a sleeping pilgrim not getting off at the right stop was going through more than one head.

We got off the train at the scheduled time and left the building by navigating a hellish network of tunnels and junctions signposted in a language that wasn’t ours. In the end, after quite a while, we came out into the open only to realise that inside, at least, there had been air conditioning.

A quarter of an hour later the priest arrived with a small band of pilgrims who had flown to Venice that same day and, a little while later, the vans arrived with all the gear to make a delicious lunch of Bimbo sliced bread, cheese and a cured meat they call “prosciutto” here, but which is good old-fashioned ham. They told us that this is the usual pilgrim menu, so we’ll have to get used to it.

In the afternoon we visited a couple of churches. The first, dedicated to St Leopold, where a Capuchin friar told us about the life of this very interesting saint: a very small monk but with a big heart. The second church, where we were able to receive the Eucharist from the hands of Fr Ferran, was the Basilica of St Anthony of Padua, an enormous Romanesque church with impressive frescoes and a mosaic in the Blessed Sacrament chapel that fervently invited you to pray.

To end the day, we had a good plate of lentil salad with tuna and olives. Our mothers would be proud of us. After Compline, we went to bed with our hearts overflowing with joy at being together and with our heads and legs already on guard for tomorrow’s first stage.