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Cute Bar

Just a neighborhood bar but we were taken with the look. As in Spain, a bar in Italy is as much a coffee and sandwich bar as anything. So, we’ll probably mention stopping at a bar often in this blog. 

Taking the Old VF route

From Belgioioso to Santa Christina we took the older route, the VF pilgrim symbol is just barely visible above the arrow. A beautiful route today through farm tracks. The EAVF (European Assoc for the Via Francigena) is continually tweaking the route to avoid busy roads and pavement. The new route is probably prettier but is three miles longer. We liked this because it went by farms and through small towns.

The irrigation ditch.

Rainy Day Leaving Pavia

Rainy day leaving Pavia.But not cold. Note the green Via arrows. The Via signage was great going out of Pavia but then got much worse once we were outside the city’s influence.

Charlie in rain coat and rain skirt at a playground. European playgrounds still have teeter-tottors, this one is a two seater. Americans playground have them only on the signs which seems to be the US symbol for playground even though no playground has them any more.

First Day Walking the Via

We walked 10.25 miles from Pavia to Belgioioso. They say pav-EE-a rather than PAV-ee-a as we had been saying. (Written Italian, unlike Spanish, does not consistently indicate which syllables are stressed.) 

The walk reminded us of the Camino in Spain, going through fields and small villages. The villages are in some disrepair but not quite as much as in Spain. 

We walked mostly on pavement, small roads with little traffic. Pretty fields, lots of new grass and spring flowers. Today’s walk was quite flat. We are building up for mountains a few days from now.

We were excited when we saw our first Via arrow.  The arrows on the Via are green, versus yellow on the Camino. 

The WiFi non funziona in our hotel tonight so we can’t upload any photos that we took today. Will add photos when we can.