Month: April 2017

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?) 

We really like the little town of Altopascio (we always want to call it “Antipasto”) and love our charming but inexpensive B&B here and the restaurant downstairs so we decided to take a rest day here. Our room is large, but the B&B is small, just three rooms in an apartment in this larger building with an adjoining music school. We hear soft music coming from there through our window. Below is the view from our window.

Alessandro, the young man in photo below owns the B&B. His mother and father, also in the photo, own the restaurant and do the cooking. They are good cooks. Alessandro also teaches music. They are the nicest people. And we aren’t just saying that because Alessandro drove us to the laundry this morning. Here is the website: La Loggia Bed & Breakfast. 

We had a somewhat hard day yesterday. We only walked about 11 miles but that is a good distance for us. That had made three eleven mile days in a row and my feet were starting to burn. It was 95% walking on asphalt along roads, some quite busy and noisy. And the sun was relentless. Leave it to Charlie and me to complain about 70 degree days being too hot if we can’t find shade. We were very hot, sweaty, and tired when we finally got to Altopascio, a small town at the end of the first stage past Lucca. But we had a treat waiting for us. We found a lovely B&B which I’ll write more about later. And Altopascio is a great little town. Not spectacular enough to bring in a whole lot of tourists but still lovely.

The above is the main church in Altopascio. I loved all the add-ons. Our B&B is just behind it. I included the photo to show what the Italian weather-people mean by “partly cloudy”. Every day the weather forecast will say “partly cloudy” (or even sometimes rain) but for days and days there haven’t been any clouds dense enough to block the sun. So, yes, we are complaining that the weather has been 70s and sunny.

Early in the trip we passed this, noted it, and walking straight on. 30 feet later we get the “off track” warning since clearly (now we see it) this means the trail turns. No problem being dense if you have the track following app backing you up.

Each day we pass one or more small road or trail-side shrines. Earlier on they were mostly open and, remarkably, not vandalized. But lately, they’ve mostly been behind protective bars. Above photo taken between the bars. Below from a bit further back.

Here are two that were out in the open:

We’ve written about the pilgrim hostel in Valpromaro. These (above and below) are the two hospitaleri who took care of us and cooked our wonderful dinner and breakfast. Hospitaleri are the volunteers who run the hostels on the Via and the Camino. Volunteers come from all over, including the United States, to manage the hostels for a certain number of weeks. The man above is from Spain. He spoke a little English and, I think, pretty good Italian. He said he was going to be there two weeks in all. The man below is Italian and he apologetically said he only speaks Italian.  All of us pilgrims were chatting away in English at the meals so I felt bad that they could not join in the whole conversation. We did ask them questions as best we could.

This hostel doesn’t charge a fee but takes donations.  Pilgrims on the Camino in Spain know these as “donativo albergues”.  Charlie and I decided to donate 10 each for the bed plus 15 each for the meals. The next morning we left fairly early.  We were about a mile away, going up a steep hill, when we remembered we had not remembered to leave a donation. Oh dear! When we got to a high point where we had phone service I called the hostel and told the Spanish hospitalero our predicament. I said we’d like to mail the donation to him.  He said he didn’t know where we should send it. He said “No problem. Next time you stay you can leave a bigger donation.” We felt bad but decided to continue on. We sure didn’t want to backtrack.  Then, a few miles later, we were walking on a small paved road and the Italian hospitalero passed us in a car.  He waved and then slowed down and then stopped to say hello to us. He said he was on his way into Lucca. (A long 11 mile walk by foot and a fast trip by car.)  We told him about forgetting the donation and so we were able to give it to him to take back to the hostel.

If you zoom in, you might be able to read that the note says Emma was born on March 8. We’ve seen two of these now. Must be to announce a new baby in the home.

We stopped for coffee in Cappanori on walk yesterday from Lucca to Altopascio. This large sign was in the coffee bar. It means Coffee should be hot as hell, black as the devil, pure as an angel and sweet as love.