After a lovely few hours in Padua, it was time to get the train back to Venice. The city’s railway station opened in 1842 and around 450 trains stop here every day. The bit in the above photo is the post-war extension.
The departures hall.
This is all in the more modern extension that has been added to the station. There are plenty of ticket machines available, but there’s a customer service desk for anyone who is still confused.
I bought my ticket using the rail company’s app which saves all that faffing about validating it. I found that the platform numbering was a little confusing as they have a sensible system of I to X (well, there’s no number IV, but that’s a different matter) and they also have 2M and 3M for some Venice services. My train was scheduled to depart from platform II, so I just had to guess that they meant the usual platform numbering and, fortunately, that worked out.
The platform floor has numerous little trip hazards along it.
I was pleased to see my Venice train appear on the signage.
Back on the Hitachi Rock train…..
The Vivalto train which is a rather decent arrangement for long-distance services.
The train got very busy towards Venice, not least because a group of what appeared to be Chinese people boarded. When I say a group, I mean around 80 people, but they were going to the old city and I was getting back off at Venice Mestre.
I think that’s the last Italian train that I’ll take for a while, having used them around fifteen times over just a few weeks. I’ve been very impressed, they’ve been reliable in terms of operation, they’ve been clean, comfortable and I don’t have to mess about with seat reservations.