Today was 19 miles hiked and 1,800′ climbed. The totals are now 196 miles hiked and 16,900′ climbed.

Today was a long one and a wet one!  The phone that we use for app-based directions was kept in a zip lock bag most of the day. It only occasionally came out for photos, when the weather allowed … with one exception.

Over two weeks ago, we hiked through the first serious downpour. At the worst of the rainfall, we got stuck behind a railroad crossing, in the middle of nowhere! We stood in the downpour for probably 5 minutes, getting drenched, and the train a long time in coming.  Strange.

Today, as a reprise to that moment, we started our walk on the rain … and got stopped by another “long time coming” train, while it was raining! A herald of what was to come that day?

Once out of town and in the local hills, we finally had “the view”! We could now see the Tyrrenian Sea! Beautiful!

We stayed in the hills for the majority of the hike, with awesome views

Also, we had some of the best trail surfaces we’ve seen during the whole of this trip!  Nice!

We finally (!) arrived, found our place, unpacked, found a grocery store, then started the clean up process.

A standard practice is to look up the next day’s lodging, then locate it on Google maps … so we have a sense of how far off the formal trail it is.

On locating Friday’s lodging, Google kept showing us a village outside of Turin, Italy … about 150 miles away!  We checked, double checked, cross referenced, etc, and Google was right. There were two villages of the same name; one was 9 miles ahead of us, and t the other was 150 miles away! Our reservation was in the wrong version of that village!

We had until midnight to cancel the incorrect version without charge. Done.  Now we needed to find another ones in the correct village.

We’re still working it out as of Thursday morning, but we have options. Lucca (the final destination) is about 25 miles away.  We can find a place there.  We could walk on Friday until we’re “done”, then catch a bus to Lucca. On Saturday, we’d reverse the process and finish the hike into Lucca. There are very few lodgings where we’d like to stop and we’re checking them out also.

This morning will be all about finding a place.

In other news, after almost two weeks of “water in phone” problems, Bill’s phone is back to charging with the cable. The wireless charger did work, but it was very sensitive to how the phone was placed on it, etc. Happy days!

Today is an off day for us, and we definitely have chores to do!

Ciao