retiredmartin

February 2026. Pavia.

A day trip from Genoa to Pavia, an unsung but beautiful University town of 70,000, nearly 40% of them students.

Not that you’d know it’s student-dominated; a bit like Cambridge they must all stay within the ancient cloisters,

and all drink at the distinctly untrendy student bar.

Mrs RM and I brought some hipster edge to “Bar” (crazy name), and I’d have loved an NBSS score, or at least an Untappd Check-in, but NO-ONE else was drinkng so we stuck to 1,20 euro espressos.

These are gorgeous buildings, accessed from the main drag through town without the sort of restrictions you get at Kings College,

and particularly impressive in Piazza Leonardo da Vinci.

There isn’t a Piazza Retired Martin, but I did give a lecture on NHS reforms here in 2014; there’s a contemporaneous sculpture of the event on the wall;

“They all look so bored !” squeals Mrs RM, delightedly.

How did I get this prize lig prestigious speaking opportunity, hobnobbing with lecturers from Vienna ? Why, I put my hand up, the life advice I gave to a p***d racegoer at Uttoxter Station recently (she wasn’t convinced).

As I was just telling my mate ChatGPT, I always had the opposite of Imposter Syndrome, always believing myself capable of things I probably wasn’t.

I’d been wanting to come back to Pavia ever since, to admire the stone, to see if I could find the entrance first time (I’d had to ask two English medical students last time as I was lost with no pubs to guide me), to see the Ponte Vechhio,

and to make one last visit to the Black Bull.