Current Day Trip to Date
Miles Walked 17.4 176.7
Feet Climbed 2090 21,960
Song of the Day: Foggy Mountain Top by Van Morrison
Walk with me, baby
Up the foggy mountain top, what's that?
Keep on walking, keep on walking, baby
On the foggy mountain top
Keep walking with me baby
Up the foggy mountain top
I want to start out wishing all our American friends a very happy Memorial Day.
When we woke up this morning, the sun was shining! Hallelujah, it has a long time since we woke up to sun in the morning! We started out from the mountain top town of Cisterna, and when you look out over the valley, it was totally foggy below. Here is a photo of Linda with the proprietor of the country villa that we stayed an last night. By the way, doesn't this guy look like Mike from Breaking Bad?! Notice all the fog below:
Here are a couple of other photos from Cisterna:
I also wanted to show a photo from the place we stayed last night. Truly a beautiful place.
Today was a very enjoyable walk. A very reasonable 16 mile walk, with a climb of about 2000 feet. As mentioned yesterday, this is a very agricultural area. The owner of the estate we stayed at last night owns a bunch of farm land around here. He told me his primary crop is tobacco. He said that in Umbria, they grow "Kentucky" tobacco, whereas in Tuscany, they grow Virginia tobacco. Who knew there was a difference? In any case, I think that is what he told me, as he was speaking in Italian! We also passed some animals on the way. This would be a good place for a clever Gary Larson caption....
For the last 6 miles or so, we met a couple from Austria (Norbert and Michela) and walked with them. This evening we had drinks with them in Citta di Castello where we are staying. A vey nice couple- she teaches kindergarten and he is an engineer, and fairly fluent in English.
A common item on the menus this past week or so has been various types of mushroom dishes. Last night we had a terrific dish called Acqua Cotto. This is a very simple, peasant dish, made with porcini mushrooms, parmigian and bread. Probably more complex than that, but it was terrific. I have had several dishes with truffles recently as well. Today, I saw this truck, telling me that the mushroom business is big here:
About 10 minutes after arriving at our hotel today, it started raining. Hard rain. Tomorrow, the forecast is for sunny in the morning, and rain in the afternoon. We have a sort of weird situation tomorrow. The next major place with hotels is about 25 miles away, which is quite far for one day. So we are staying in our hotel for 2 nights. Tomorrow we will walk about 12 miles and then call the hotel. They will come and get us and bring us back to our hotel. Then, the next day, they will take us back to the trail to begin again from where we left off. I am nervous that my phone won't get reception and we will be left out in the wilderness to be eaten by the wild Italian animals! I guess we can always forage for mushrooms in the forest! My luck, we will eat some poisoness mushrooms...
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