Tomorrow I climb up to the pass at Monginevro and say good bye to Italy as we cross into France. I do want to point out that although the Tour de France also climbs up and over the same pass, the cyclists take the less steep direction and let their sag wagons carry their suitcases. Grandma Friday and I have also heard that some of ...
Normally we find our accommodation through the Booking app. Occasionally, however, the app does not have properties where we need them, so we have to consult other sources and make a phone call. This isn’t a problem for us in Spain or France, but our Italian is almost nonexistent. So when we made a recent reservation at Agroturismo Lo Stagno we didn’t quite catch the ...
Today we passed through the small town of Sabbioneta. It is completely enclosed within Renaissance walls, and has UNESCO status in conjunction with the city of Mantova (Mantua). Both places were ruled by the Gonzaga family, who produced a saint and a shocking number of bishops and cardinals.I have lost track of the number of UNESCO sites that we have visited on this trip. Every ...
We have spent the last two weeks moving slowly across Italy on and off the Via Postumia. Our best days are always the ones Andrea Vitiello has carefully planned on either the cycling or walking Via Postumia . For reasons of time and availability of affordable accommodation, however, we are sometimes cutting corners and taking more direct routes. These straighter routes are more efficient, but ...
There are few things more annoying than reading endless blogs about beautiful towns and villages. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to read for once that we arrived in a cesspool of a place that smelled like sewer gas and looked like a dollar store exploded in the central square. Sorry, no such luck. As far as I can tell Italian towns smell like jasmine and roses, ...
I’m sitting in the waiting room in the hospital at Cittadella. I had a brief glimpse of the intact medieval walls before turning into this large modern brick structure. Yesterday a watched a blood engorged tick backing out of my leg after a good feed. I could almost see the satisfied grin on its face. The area is still red and looks a little like ...
After a 34 km walk and half a tub of ice cream Gord was still up for a walk around Treviso. Italy is amazing; step into a Cathedral and stumble upon a painting by Titian. In Treviso it’s his Annunciation. We also were treated to some frescos in the crypt from the 13 or 14th century. Gord and I love this stuff. It’s great being ...
We are staying at a lovely house with our host Lilica in a small community halfway between Portogruaro and Treviso. I offered to cook spaghetti carbonara and she laughed and said that’s what she was going to make. She insisted on making us dinner and we had a lively conversation through the meal. We toasted Google Translate, that allowed us to talk freely about everything ...
Yesterday was a rain day. It was only the fourth soaker on the trip so far. It feels like something magic when the rain stops. Suddenly an overcast day is fantastic and a small square of blue, or a ray of sunshine makes me feel jubilant. Today we had a number of these moments after being chased across the landscape by occasional thunder storms. It ...
Before we departed for this Camino I had a casual look at our route across Italy on our mapping app. Zooming into one of the many undulations on the track, I was surprised to see a perfectly symmetrical nine pointed star. This is the town of Palmanova, which we passed through this morning.Palmanova has an interesting history. It is a city fortress founded by Venice ...