Today was 18 miles and 700′ of climbing. We’re now over 200 miles walked (206) and 23,600′ of climbing. Honestly, we believe the GPS watch was acting up because, apart from 4 overpasses, we can’t think of ANY climbing today!

We don’t have much of a wifi today, so the post will be short. It was a day of endless rice fields

Now, rice is grown with a lot of standing water. Standing water is like a tropical paradise for mosquitoes 🦟… It took about 2 minutes in the first rice field before Bill pulled out the DEET. Then, all was well!

The other feature of today’s walk was the ever-presence of a very tall, snow-capped peak on the Italian/Swiss border.

Asking an Austrian and a French for clues proved to no avail. So, we went to where all answers are found … Google! Checking the map, the Matterhorn perfectly lined up with the direction we were looking. Net we’re calling it the Matterhorn (unless someone corrects us)

Arrivederci!

Today was 12 miles and 400′ of climbing. Totals are now 218 miles walked and 24,000′ climbed.

After the day’s hike, the chores are critical; shower, laundry, provisioning for the next day’s walk, the blog and … finding that really cold drink that satisfies your thirst! For us, it’s an ice cold Diet Coke!

Yesterday, our search for that liquid gold took on a life of its own. We hit 4 stores coming into town before scoring. And in gluttonous fashion, we bought far more than we could consume … the poor, thirst-driven Pilgrims couldn’t stop themselves!

After chores and drinking too much Diet Coke, we searched out dinner. Our host recommended Theatro26, a hip food joint with lots of options,  including Pizza!

Superb!

And

It was good!

Today’s hike began with a walk out of town and a river crossing,

Followed by the now- familiar rice fields

From there, the path began to follow small canals, using trails that were almost undiscernable from the weeds and other growth.

Our Via Francigena app told us that we were exactly where we should be because, otherwise, you’d have no clue! Even the trail signs were far and few between.

Why the difference in trails versus the last week or so?  Well, we’re in a new region. Just like States or Counties in the U.S., everybody does things differently (better/worse roads, signs, etc).

We have now crossed through Valle d’Aoste (from the Swiss border through Aosta valley), through Piemonte, and now we’re in Lombardy!

It appears that Lombardy spends less effort on Via Francigena signs and trail maintenance. Oh well.

Enough for now.  Chores await (and a cold Diet Coke!)

Today was 10 miles and 400′ of climb. Totals are now 228 miles and 24,400′ of climbing.

Last night’s evening preparations included a most necessary Gelato splurge (triple scoop!). We’ll take photos … next time.

All days in Lombardi begin with an obligatory river crossing

And endless rice fields …

Another feature of this section is that about 30% of the trail is on paved Italian backroads.

The challenge is that this is Italy! Drivers will do 50, 60 or more on these narrow backroads! The good news is that they are usually very careful and pull over as much as they can to accommodate us (we also step off the road when they are close to us). If you look carefully at the photo, you’ll see a car coming and already they’ve begun to move over.  Grazie!

Something else we’ve noted is the farming of trees, likely for paper. Very large fields will have 100’s of trees all perfectly spaced and manicured. The photo below  shows some bad news for one field. Note that about 1/2 of the trees are fallen over.

At first, we thought it was man-caused. Maybe that’s how the farmer harvests. However, when we got into town we saw a couple other trees in front yards fallen over in a similar fashion. Our working theory now is that it was a big wind/rain event. We’re glad we weren’t out hiking then!

It’s starting to get warm out here again. We snapped a photo of a few fellow peregrinos enjoying some shade …

Nipper Encore: Dalai Lama was quoted as saying, “if you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito”. Well, last night that adage was proven right! One or two nippers were loose in our room and worked a regular schedule of buzzing our ears. Bill would dive under the sheets until it was too warm … and he didn’t hear them anymore. Moments after coming out, the nippers were back! Yep, “small” can make a difference!

Caio!

Today was 13 miles walked and 400′ climbed. Totals are now 241 miles hiked and 24,800′.

Just one more day …

Okay, food is a big part of ours, and any hikers journey. We have been walking for nearly a week through the Rice Belt of Italy and have yet to have risotto! Also, this area of Lombardi is famous for goose dishes and we haven’t sampled.

Until last night! We found a great restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed a risotto dish (yum),

And goose breast.

Honestly, that goose breast would challenge any tritip for flavor and texture. It was excellent!

Today’s walk started with more fields of wind-damaged trees

When we passed a cornfield with signs of wind damage, it was time to do an internet check.

Well, about 6 weeks ago, a”super cell” passed through the area spawning multiple tornados!  Wow! Again, we’re glad we weren’t here, then!

We are now about 20 miles directly south of Milan. The Milan Airport is about 10 miles north of Milan. Not surprisingly, we were accompanied by a steady stream of planes landing, every couple minutes.

Lunch:  We typically bring our lunch fixings, bread, turkey, and cheese, etc, purchased the night before. Around noon, we’ll look for a shady spot and ideally a bench or table. As we passed through a town, we were searching for that “spot”.

No success, but there was a store along the way, so we stopped for some cold drinks, then found a shady spot near a small building that had a “purified water” dispenser. It was very quiet and shady, so down on the ground we went!

The bread came out, the cheese, the turkey … it was all spread out around us (as we sat on the shaded ground). As soon as everything was spread out, it seemed like HALF THE TOWN came to that little building for water!

There we were, these poor Pilgrims, sitting on the ground, trying to eat a morsel of food. Somewhere between hilarious and embarrassing is what we felt!

It tipped dramatically to hilarious when one of the locals went to his car and brought out a huge roll of paper towels. He gave it to Diane.

After trying to say, “thank you but no thank you” in Italian, we gave in and took a few. We gave the roll back. He then unrolled about 20 sheets of paper towels and gave them to us. Then he tried to give us the whole roll!

Bill, using sign language, explained that we are hiking the Via Francigena and cannot carry them! He finally relented! Those, poor starving Pilgrims…

We wished we had a film of the whole affair. Quiet shade, half the town showing up, then the generosity. Only on a Camino!

Ciao for now!

Today was 16 miles walked and 700′ climbed, for totals of 257 miles walked and 25,500′ climbed.

For the trip, we’ve averaged 12.2 miles per day and about 1,200′ of climbing.  These are probably the lowest averages we’ve had on a Camino, but … so what?  It’s the journey, not the pace!

To see where we’ve been, it’s useful to pull back our map of our travels

Our journey, this year, is the GRAY path.  We have now traveled about 2,300 miles on European trails in the last decade!

There is more remaining. God willing, we still have to connect the “dots” in Italy, as we are still missing a section of our walking, from Pavia (where we are today) to Lucca (where we started in 2019 when we traveled to Rome).

So, speaking of Rome:  We were stopped on our walk (about 4 miles out of Pavia) by a local cyclist. He could see we were Pilgrims by our backpacks, hiking poles, and dust- covered shoes. We’ve clearly been “out”for a while! In broken English, he asked us “are you walking to Rome?” We said,  “no, just Pavia”. He looked bewildered! Pavia is only 4 miles away?  That’s a morning stroll! How could you only be going to Pavia and look so … so trail worn? It was only when we explained that we started in Lausanne,  400 kilometers back, that he smiled widely and accepted us! He called us “Lupos” (wolves, in Italian,  which we believe/ hope is a compliment), then wished us well.

In fact, it is a bit weird not finishing at a memorable finish, like Santiago, or Rome, or even Le Puy (the French consider LePuy to be the “capital” of European caminos). Finishing in Pavia is kind of like stopping in Topeka,  Kansas. It’s a place … but why?

Our journey today was beautiful.

And we were escorted for much of the journey by the Italian armada

Also, we learned our lesson about lunch spots yesterday. So today, we stopped by a beautiful river

We followed that river for about 5 miles, finishing by exiting the river path and into a beautiful ancient college town.

And now we’re here!

Tomorrow, we take the train to Milan, then a plane to Paris … and on to home!

As the late Jimmy Buffett sang, “its been a lovely cruise!”

We’re done walking now, and only have to make it back home. Pavia is really a charming ancient university town, with the university formally founded in 1361. All of the streets are cobblestone, with many, many old and beautiful buildings to check out.

But not for us, this time. We finished later yesterday afternoon with 16 miles and high 80’s temperatures. After finding our place and cleaning up (and writing the blog), our goal was to find food!

Shouldn’t be a problem, right? Cue the major regional festival in town, please! Bring in an extra 25,000 people, okay?  Finding a restaurant proved daunting … but we nailed it!

We found a local restaurant away from the crowds, and feasted.

Bill ordered a seafood spaghetti and Diane ordered a mixed grilled seafood plate.  When my dish arrived, I thought perhaps I ordered a mushroom!  A little investigation was required.

On opening it up, there was my delicious seafood spagetti! And the crust? Wow! It was delicious and PERFECT for sopping up the remaining juice, after the spaghetti was gone. Another superb meal was had!

Odds and ends: We travel with some rudimentary backpacking cooking equipment, like a knife, spork and a very portable water heater.  About 4 days into the hike,  Bill’s precision crafted titaniun Spork got lost. Darn! Seriously, we use it every day because we buy yogurts for an extra “protein hit” in the mornings. Now, it’s lost!

Going to a local supermarket, they sell disposable forks. We bought one.

($10 spork in left, $0.10 disposable on right). Well, that disposable lasted 2.5 weeks, making us wonder if the fancy one is really needed anymore?

Luggage: When you carry everything on your back, flights should be easy, right? Everything is “carry-on”! Not so. Hiking poles

are/can be restricted to checked luggage. That means we need a suitcase to hold our poles (note that they fold, minimizing space needs). But, we can’t hand carry a suitcase for 250 -500 miles of hiking …

Options:  Often, we can ship the bag ahead to our final hiking stop and pick it up there; if there’s a shipping service and a storage service.  Or, buy a cheap suitcase, use it to go home, use it to return, then just discard it!  This year, we gave our old “cheap” suitcase to the clerk at our hotel in Switzerland, then started our walk.

On arriving here in Milan (fashion home to the world),  we went out looking for that iconic “statement”bag … for 20€ to carry our poles home!

Well, inflation struck! We found the immigrant vendor and negotiated our best price on this fashion statement bag. 25€.

That darned inflation!

As we review what equipment we had at our disposal, we ask,  “what was the most valuable thing we brought?” Given the miles and miles and miles walked along river paddies, the answer was clear

Enough said! See you stateside.