Our first three nights we were in B&Bs but there are none in Orio Litta so we are staying in a parrochia, a church-run pilgrim hostel. Our room is a lovely place at the top of this tower which we were told dates from the middle ages and was once a dairy farm and cheese factory run by Benedictine monks. (No sign of cows or monks now. Quite a nice remodel.)
A downside is that we have to go down two flights of stairs and then walk another 100 feet to get to the bathroom, but the view is great. (We’ll post photos tomorrow.)
One other pilgrim is staying here tonight so we met our first pilgrim. He is Italian and showed us his blisters which is a traditional pilgrim greeting.
We called and when we got here a nice woman showed us around and said Enrico, who we had called, was coming.
Then Enrico came, checked us in, and was very helpful and gave us some background and told us where to get dinner. We chatted with him for 15 minutes. Enrico has walked the Spanish Camino eight times. once from Seville (southern Spain) and just about every variation.
Wynette has been wonderful with her Italian. It is basic but essential, almost no one speaks any English.
A few hours later Pierluigi came by to chat with us. He is the mayor of Orio Litta and is quite a booster, very friendly, and spoke reasonable English. He said they had had 900 pilgrims stay at this parrocchia in 2016 and it is increasing by 100 a year. Tiny by Camino de Santiago standards (about 250,000 total pilgrims a year into Santiago) but growing.
Pierluigi said he has photos of most of the pilgrims who stay here. He took Charlie’s photo (Wynette was just getting out of the shower and had a towel around her head). He insisted that Charlie wear his floppy hat for the photo, even though we were upstairs in our room at the time.