After spending a long weekend in Milan with Scott and our friends, I headed off alone to visit a friend in Abano Terme, a small spa town near Padua (Padova in Italian). Abano is relatively new for an Italian town, as it was mainly built up in the 50s and 60s, when having oneself wrapped in mud was the hip thing to do.
My friend happens to own one of the many spa hotels in the town, the Hotel Universal Terme. It’s a grand, old-fashioned place that makes you feel like you’ve gone back in time from the second you walk through the door (this is what the clients want, he tells me).