Day: March 28, 2017

Statistics

We previously mentioned that 900 pilgrims had stayed in Orio Litta in 2016. Danilo Parisi keeps careful stats and took about 1200 pilgrims across the Po in his boat in 2016. Many pilgrims go around and take the bridge, but we have no idea how many. But the 1,200 and 900 are close. We might guess that 2-4 times that many pilgrims on the whole VF so 2,000 to 4,000 a year. These are just guesses but the VF has a lot of room to grow.

Finally, Another Pelligrino 

We met A (that is all we remember of his name) at the hostel in Orio Letto. Then we met up again on the trail the next day (above).  He is Italian. Wouldn’t you say he looks like a pilgrim? He chose to walk to the bridge to cross the river Po. We took the ferry (see previous post). 

Ferry Crossing with Danilo Parisi 

Danilo lives on the south side of the Po River. He ferries pilgrims across. Pilgrims can walk to a bridge to cross, but the bridge is several miles out of the way. To do the ferry crossing, you have to call Danilo the day before to set up a ride. So that is what we did. Well, actually Enrico at the Orio Litta hostel called for us. He set it up for 9 am. We didn’t want to be late so allowed plenty of time to walk the 4 kilometers to the boat dock. Got there at 8:30. No problem, we can wait, even though it’s a little cold and windy. Plenty of time to get some extra layers out of our packs. But at 9:15 Danilo still hadn’t come. We called Enrico who started trying to get in touch with Danilo. Then about 9:30 one of Danilo’s friends drove up in a car and said the boat was rotto (broken) but Danilo would be coming. Finally about 10:00 Danilo arrived in his boat. He told us he started out before 9 and discovered his gas can was leaking and he had no gas. That’s why he was an hour late. He took us in his boat to his beautiful house (photo below) 4.5 kilometers down river where we signed his book, got a stamp in our pilgrim passports, and paid him £10 each. He keeps statistics about the people he serves so he asked us our ages. Because of that, we discovered we had same birth year so went on to compare months and days and found he is exactly 3 days younger than me. He was a hoot. 

Earlier photo… waiting for the boat:

A Rest Day in Fidenza

Wynette has a bad-looking blister and we decided to have a rest day today in Fidenza, not small, 24,000 people but very quiet and restful, at least in the old city where we are. Plenty of time to enjoy the coffee. 

Good Days and Mixed Days

We had a mixed day on Monday 3/27. We got up at 6:30 to make the ferry at 9, 2.5 miles away. Another post will explain how that went. We walked into the next town and found lots of things closed because “Monday” when lots of things in Italy are closed. Wynette called a agrotourismo to ask about a reservation and the guy there was quite unfriendly and impatient with her Italian, the first time we have encountered this. That kind of spoiled things for a while. We decided to go on to the next town. That was tiring and unpleasant walking along busy roads. Finally in Piacenza we got a taxi to the train station.

We had previously intended to skip the next two legs and take the train to Fidenza. That worked out fine and we got a nice hotel in Fidenza and have already had two excellent meals.

Monday Dinner

We ate at a little place near out hotel described as “down-home cooking.” Run by a family. The food was excellent. The first course was antipasto with what they described as fried bread and as a local speciality. People from New Mexico can see they are basically sopapillas. They were a little lighter and less deep-fried than the typical sopapilla. And no honey was served. People ate them with the cold cuts. Very good.

Walking by the Highway

The VF (and the Camino de Santiago) going into and out of cities is often on busy roads. This is the bridge across the River Po going into Piacenza, population 100,000. The path is raised so it is not dangerous but it is not very relaxing walking for a mile or more with cars whizzing by.