Abano Terme

It had been a while since we had gone anywhere and we decided to do something special on super bowl weekend. After a little thinking, that something developed into a long weekend at a spa. After first trying to book reservations at a spa we had previously visited, Galzignano Terme, we settled on a the Abano Grand Hotel at Abano Terme.

Abano Terme is a city in northeastern Italy, about 6 miles south of Padova, located in an area known as the Euganean Hills. It is famous for hot springs and mud baths and has been a thermal spa since the time of the Romans. The Euganean Hills are the remains of very old volcanoes, they are low, rounded and covered with green foliage. They are unusual projections in an area that is otherwise flat.
Before this trip, we had stayed at spa hotels at Galzignano Terme, another thermal spa city in the same area and deriving its waters from the same volcanic activity. Despite their proximity, the two cities are only about 9 miles apart, the waters differ greatly. We found the water at Abano Terme much less irritating to our noses than that at Galzignano Terme.

At Abano Terme, we stayed at the Abano Grand Hotel. While a relatively new building, being about 11 years old, it was built to look like and have the feel of an extremely well maintained grand old European hotel. It has the nicest and largest hotel bar I have seen in Italy as well as a very nice smoking room and a beautiful card room with about 10 green felted bridge tables. The dining room is what one would expect. The well decorated rooms are very large, we stayed in the smallest which was about 500 square feet. I was reminded of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. One of the reasons we chose the Grand Hotel Abano was the food reviews I found posted online. I could not find one person who thought the food at the hotel was anything other than extraordinary. General reviews of the hotel were about 98% positive, itself an unusually positive number. Even the couple of bad reviews could not find fault with the food in the restaurant. Our experience confirmed these reviews and I personally found the food and the service to be as good as any I have had in Italy.

The pools of the spa begin indoors, where they are quite large, and go outdoors, where they are even larger, through plastic curtains that resemble vertical blinds. The water comes from the volcanic springs at about 200 degrees. The spa cools the water to 97 degrees in one pool and 91 degrees in another. When we there the early morning outside air was a little above freezing causing large clouds of steam arise from the hot waters in the pools.

The pools and the spa have a large number of whirlpool jets and different types of settings, shallow, walking, hot tub style and of course the ever present, masochistic, very cold tub (the only thing we didn't try). Compared to other spa we have experienced the assortment was larger and more varied. The most impressive is an array of three stainless steel tubes about 10 feet high located near the pool that shoot out three streams of hot water similar to what you would expect from fire hydrants and landing about 20 feet into the pool. They are painful to have hit you directly but a short distance away in the water they provide a good massage. They are activated by pressing a button and are only on for about 10 minutes at a time.

Abano Terme (pop. 19,000) exists for tourists and it has made its city core off limits to vehicles and designed it for pedestrian traffic. Additionally, it has a new area that sequences buildings throughout a large grassy mall area that was different than anything I have previously seen but I am sure exists else where. Both areas have a variety of shops, caffes and restaurants mostly aimed at tourists though we observed a substantial number of locals on the streets and shopping.

For other things to do near Abano Terme, Padova is a short distance away with some very significant art including what many believe to be one of the seminal works of the Renaissance, Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel. While it looks mild today, it was one of the first times in 500 years that an artist had dared to depict emotion, motion and depth of field; thereby defying the religious ban on anything seen as glorifying man. Venice is near, with all that it is. Both Venice and Padova are easily reached by car or train. When I have stayed in Padova in the past and traveled to Venice, I never checked a train scheduled because the trains run so frequently, about every 5 minutes.

We had a great weekend at the spa and I would recommend it to anyone thinking of traveling to Padova or Venice as an alternative to staying in one of the cities.