The soundtrack of the bus ride from Venice Airport into the city was some fucking fat, ruddy faced moron harping on about how great Brexit is going to be. There is some great vote happening today and he is like a dog with two dicks at the thought of the inevitable result. Without a hint of irony, some tweed jacket-wearing cunt pontificates about pulling up the ladder to Europe whilst travelling across it on a cheap city break.

Nearly 30 years ago I ran away from home. I was a teenager. My mum and dad had gone on holiday and left me with my sister. On day one, when she was at work, I grabbed my passport, posted the keys through the letterbox and split. I used all my savings to buy an Interail ticket. Travelling down through northern Europe nothing seemed that different. The languages, maybe, but not much else. It was familiar. It wasn't until I crossed the Alps that it all changed. I got on a train in Austria in the evening and woke at dawn as we crossed the causeway to Venice. I still remember getting off the train and there were palm trees along the platform. This was the first time I'd ever been anywhere that wasn't just like home. It was hot, humid and it smelled different. I stepped out the station into what sticks in my mind as some kind of Byzantine scene of chaos from a film. I loved it. And I had never been back.

The bus ride from the airport is like anywhere. The usual roadside pizzerias, garden centres, motels. Then you swing round a corner on to the causeway. And then I'm back, that nervy teenager running away on a big adventure. Venice is right in front of me, silhouetted against a hazy amber morning sky. But it isn't the same place. You can barely see the town now. Cruise ships cling to the shore like giant parasites. They are literally the tallest structures in the city. They dwarf everything and make a black wall around it. A united fleet of Chinese and Russians and Americans have laid a siege that no other empire managed to do in Venice's thousand years of existence. Occasionally, through the ships, you glimpse a tower or a dome. The excitement of being back gives way to the sadness of change.

We pull into the bus station and I'm out. My feet back on the ground of a place I fell in love with. I cross the bridge to Santa Lucia station and it's now also subsumed by a shopping mall. Tour guides and porters tout for business. Millenials jostle to get the right spot to do the Instagram leap in front of the Grand Canal. I've got an hour to kill and think about going for a walk. I'm hot, I'm hungry and I can't be bothered. I sit on the steps of Santa Lucia and watch the world go by until train time.

For a start, Italians call Padua Padova. If you are trying to book trains or buses then that's where you are going.

Padua is maybe 30 minutes away from the centre of Venice. I think if I ever go back I'd probably stay in a decent hotel in Padua and get the train into Venice rather than some over-priced tourist dump in the city. Oh, but isn't it just so romantic? No, paying a hundred Euros for a small cupboard and a chemical toilet is not romantic. The journey is not promising but it does show you what Venice really was. It was a trading empire, pure and simple. They didn't think they were building a picturesque backdrop for Yank tourists and dopey millenial Instagrammers. The train takes you behind the curtain, snaking through the miles of crumbling warehouses and depots. Skeletons of huge storage buildings, covered in ivy and brambles and graffitti. That is what Venice was built on. Buying and selling things. Now Venice's trade is less tangible. Hotel rooms and the world's most expensive coffee.

If you need to dump your bag there is a left luggage store in the station. Look for the deposito bagagli signs. It is on the very first platform just before you enter the building from the track side. If you face the building then turn left and there is a door further down the platform.

The station is in the north of Padua. A long way north. Give yourself a good 30 minutes to walk from the station to the centre. Leave the station and cross the bus and tram lines over the piazza. There is a street with a bar on the corner, head down this.

The Scrovegni Chapel is part of a bigger archaeological park. There are the remains of a Roman arena here (locked when I visited) and bits and pieces of Padua's past. Chunks of ancient walls and a culverted stream or canal or something.

Other than that, there isn't much to keep you in this area. Head south again until you hit the city centre. Padua is a really pleasant place. Despite being so close to Venice, it isn't very touristy. It's a lived in, living city. There is a shit load of history on display but this is a place where people just go about their business without morons like me cluttering up the streets.

The next big thing you hit is the area around the mediaeval town hall, the Pallazzo della Ragione. It's an impressive big lump of a building and the top floor is supposed to be one of the biggest mediaeval halls in Europe.

Surrounding it are two big squares, the Piazza delle Erbe and the Piazza dei Frutti. Don't ask me which one is which, I have no idea. One had a massive, sprawling market in it. A real market, not some horseshit full of "artisans" and "makers" (i.e. millenials that can't get a job doing anything else and expect tourists and middle class shoppers to support them). There is a little alleyway between the two squares that has some really nice bars to quaff Aperol in. An excellent pastime is to sit there and ponder why so many incredibly beautiful women are walking around with short, fat, ugly men. So much for la dolce vita, most Italian women seem to be getting a really bad deal out of it.

Santa Giustina was closed when I got there. That's the thing you need to prepare yourself for when travelling anywhere in Europe, especially in Italy and Spain. Random closures at what you would expect to be prime time. I was a little bit pissed off. I'm nursing an achilles injury and it hurt like hell. I'd walked. A lot. I'd passed up the Scrovegni Chapel, major tourist points. I'd put off drinking Aperol and eating pizza.

That's when I spotted them. A group of middle aged Italians milling around one of the doors. Remember I said Italy is the Saudi Arabia of Christianity? Well, here it is, the Catholic version of the Hajj. Pilgrims. They were going to be my ticket in.

I hung around the back of the group and sure enough, the door swung open. We're in! I have to admit it, I was shitting it. I was the youngest person there by a long way and I'm in my 40's. I stood out like a banana on a calvary scene. I kept thinking, any minute now and the Catholic Security Service is going to pounce on me. Brass it out, Peachy. They swarmed round a desk selling votive cards. That was my chance, make a break for it, go deep and by the time anyone notices I'll have seen half the place at least.

It worked. It worked well. In fact, I had the parts I wanted to see to myself. At the far end of the abbey complex is the oldest part that dates back to the Roman times. Giustina was your standard high-born, beautiful Roman girl who'd taken to Christianity via Saint Prosdocimo (whose tomb is also here). Augustus Maximian, co-emperor and accomplice to the sociopathic Diocletian, took a shine to her and the story played out like hundreds of others. Giustina was having none of it so Maximian put a sword through her chest. A Veronese painting showing the scene is housed in the church. Giustina would eventually be avenged. In 310AD, Maximian made a fairly stupid decision to kill Constantine the Great. Constantine "strongly suggested" (ahem) that he choose suicide. Which he did.

A church grew up around Santa Giustina's tomb in the 600's, now just a simple marble slab in the floor. There are Roman mosaics on display nearby which show that this spot was in use for a hell of a long time. On the way to the old, original part of the complex is the Well of the Martyrs. It sounds like it should be something from an Indiana Jones film or a Dan Brown novel. But peek through the grating in the marble lid and you'll see the bones of more victims of Diocletian and Maximian's persecutions. How they ended up down a well or how anyone found them is a mystery to me but you can't beat a good relic.

I liked Padua. It's a place I would like to linger. The city feels lived in and alive. The university makes it a young place but it's also got enough real people so that it doesn't become some hipster dump. The streets are scruffy and a bit dirty but they're also busy with actual people. It is not a themepark like Venice, there are no droves of Chinese tourists getting under foot. There aren't any tourists. At all. 

On the way back to the station I stopped in a little park. I bought a beer and sat at a table under autumn trees holding on to the last of their leaves. I watched people going by and reflected on things I'd done and on things I hadn't done and how that would have changed everything. And then I reminded myself I wouldn't be sitting in a park in Italy in the autumn if I had taken that different path.

Time to go. Sometimes it always feels like it is time to go. I wandered back to the station and bought a ticket to Verona.