Pascua in Gambassi Terme

We’ve had poor wifi the past few days and haven’t done much blogging. It is overwhelming. There’s so much we could chatter on about. We’ve had two super lovely walking days since my complainy post about the heat and highway walking a few days ago. We’ve started getting up early to be out the door by 6:00 and that’s really helped. It’s exhilarating to be walking in the early dusk. And yesterday we had a rare cloudy day. We weren’t so lucky with what was supposed to be today’s walk. We had planned to break a hard 14 mile stretch into two 7 mile days but it turned out none of the possible places to stay in the middle were available and there were no services.  I couldn’t face walking 14 very up and down miles in the hot sun with no food… So we ended up taking a taxi and skipping those 14 miles, and spending the day in Gambassi Terme, a small, utterly charming, off-the-beaten-track village. We had to wait a few hours for our B&B room to become available but just next door is the Bar Centrale and it seems to be a gathering place for the whole community. Good music playing, lots of chairs set up in the shade. Dozens of people around, including a fair number of pilgrims passing through who clearly did not wimp out on that 14 mile walk.  We had a wonderful Easter lunch at our B&B/restaurant along with several local families. We’ve been noticing Easter lunch specials advertised in restaurants and were thrilled to get to partake of one. So, buona Pasqua, happy Easter, everyone. (PS, where’s Waldo?)