Frost this morning. 0°C. The heat pump ran most of the night to keep our room warm. Must not be much insulation in this old building. Our landlady is coming at 7:30am to serve us breakfast. We are up at 6:15am to shower pack and tape Sally’s feet for her day of walking. It takes me about fifteen minutes using KT tape. Bottoms of the balls of her feet and from just behind the toes the length of her foot and up the back of her heals. Then wrap three toes on each foot to avoid blisters. We have the right procedure because her feet are holding up very well.
Our host served us yogurt, bread, oranges, boiled eggs, fruit juices and a coffee cake/pie made from sour cherries to die for. She didn’t eat with us but was in the kitchen puttering and tidying up.
With breakfast done it was time to head out into the cold for our walk to Monterotondo, about 11 miles distant. I had some concerns about ice on the road and slipping, but we found the road surface dry and not slippery at all. It was another glorious sunny day!
As we get closer to Rome we keep expecting to be in the suburbs, but not yet. We still spent most of the day walking by fields of crops and orchards with panoramic views to the distant mountains behind and toward Rome ahead.
About half an hour into our hike we heard a tractor coming up slowly behind us. As the elderly gentleman on it came abreast of us he stopped, idled down his engine and began talking to us. Like yesterday, his face was animated with kindness, friendliness and joy. He spoke in Italian which we didn’t understand but from gestures we thought he was telling us about his olive orchards ahead and asking us to stop. We again took a photo, which he thoroughly enjoyed the idea of and then puttered on ahead. Soon we passed him. He was off to the right in an olive orchard, a younger man attaching what looked like a brush hog to the back of his tractor.
It was just a beautiful, sunny day, country walk. We stopped for lunch on a dry piece of grass on the side of the road with a chain link fence for our backs to lean against. Bread, meat, cheese, an orange, some potato chips and a couple cookies. After half an hour we picked up and headed down a steep hill, past a statue, up a hill and onto a slightly busier paved road.
As we walked along a stretch of road surrounded by fields and orchards an approaching car pulled over, the driver rolled down the passenger’s window and started talking to us in heavily accented English. At first we found him interesting. He told us he was a diplomats of some kind for the Italian government and that he had met four US presidents, Bush I & II, Obama, Clinton and knew well Christopher Warren. Soon he got out of his car and continued to tell us about himself. A nonstop flow of information about himself, in asked for. It was interesting at first, then it got tiring. A one sided conversation. We learned about his dogs, where he lived, terrorists he had warned the US about and so on. We eased ourselves out of the conversation and got walking down the road again, but not before we had his number and were told to call him if we needed anything.
Just as we entering the outskirts of Monterotondo a woman came up behind us, a pack on her back and a dog on a leash. A quick inquiry and we had met our second pilgrim on the trail. She had left Ricardo’s this morning, meaning she had done in one day what we had done in two. We chatted for a moment, again stinted by the Italian/English barrier. Snap of a photo and she was on her way.
We walked into town and slipped into a McDonalds that was right on our route. We were both quite hungry, this was the first food available on the route today. We downed our hamburger, fish sandwich, fries and Cokes and felt our energy levels revive. We walked across the street to the Conad grocery store and got a few items and then walked the remaining 0.75 miles up to our apartment at Piazza della Libertà, 21.
It seemed impossible that it could rain tomorrow, today’s weather was so spectacular. But, we rented this place for two nights and tried for a third due to the forecast. It was booked for Tuesday night so we found another place just a block away.
I hadn’t washed my pants since Spoleto so I drew a sink of water and washed all the clothes I have been wearing. We put them in a rack in direct line of the hot air coming out of the wall mounted heat pump unit, hoping they would dry by morning, although it didn’t really matter as we were staying put another day.
We were a little later than usual getting to our rental. It was a long day, a little later than usual start and a long stop at McDonalds all contributed.
We spent an hour deciding what to do with the three days we will have after getting to Vatican City (and Thanksgiving Dinner with the Pope 😀). We decided to go to the Amalfi Coast and checked bus routes and hotels there. After much discussion and research about trains, busses, Salerno or Sorento we settled on a FlixBus to Salerno, local busses to Amalfi for a hotel on Friday and Saturday nights and local busses on Saturday to Positano for a day of play, then back to Rome Sunday for our Vatican and Holy Door visit on Monday morning. We didn’t book anything. We decided to sleep on it and see if the plans made sense in the morning.
In bed by 7:30 and asleep by 8:00. Oooo, definitely the most comfortable bed of the trip.
Sally at our breakfast. Notice the round pastry to her right. Amazing.
Friendly dude on his tractor stops to say hi.
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