Florence to Pontassieve May 17, 2015

Florence to Pontassieve Sunday May 17

                                                                   Current Day                                Trip to Date                            

Miles Walked                                                 17.0                                            45.6

Feet Climbed                                                1510                                           2050

Songs of the Day by BB King:

The Road I Travel:

"I have one pair of shoes
Don't even have a change of clothes
And this road I've got to travel, yes, it's so chilly and cold"

Riding with the King:

We're on a TWA to the promised land

Every woman,  child and man

Gets a Cadillac and a great big diamond ring

Don't you know you're ridin' with King

I want to start out paying tribute to the late, great BB King, who passed away this weekend.  He was one of a kind and will be sorely missed.

Today started off badly.  Saturday night, I was trying to recover a lost file on my iPad.  I searched the Internet to understand what I needed to do.  Basically, apple support said to wipe the iPad, then restore using a prior backed up version from iCloud.  Ok, I know, it's 11:00 at night, and yes we had a very good bottle of wine with dinner.  But, hey, how hard could this be?  So, I proceeded through the suggested pathway.  Only shortly after I wiped  the iPad clean, the Internet stopped working....so now, I've got.... An iPad with nothing.  When we finally arrived at our next hotel this afternoon and had a good internet connection, I was indeed able to restore my iPad, with two notable exceptions: 1. The file I was trying to recover was not recovered and 2. The iPad app I was using to write the blog was no longer available on the App Store (and my draft posting for Florence was forever gone).  So, I rewrote the Florence posting directly on the Google website (a very inefficient and frustrating process) and then downloaded a new iPad app to write this blog with.    My friend Rick Rommel said that we should avoid the web cam and all the new fangled stuff and stay more Hemmingway like.  But do you think Hemmingway had to figure out the god#%mn apple operating system or some new app that he doesn't know how to work?!!  

Notwithstanding the technical difficulties, today was fantastic..  First, the weather was much better than the cold and damp weather of the past few days.  If anything, it was almost too warm today, at 83 degrees.  Tomorrow is expected to be even warmer.  And we are climbing over 4000 feet tomorrow.   This will be among the highest 2 or 3 climbs we have done in a single day.  

Today was a challenging 17 mile hike, with about 1500 feet of climb.   The first 2-3 miles were finding our way out of Florence.  Like many of the great European cities, Florence has a great old central city.  Then, the subsequent city rings get progressively worse, mainly because they were built in the 50's and 60's.  At some point, the suburbs turn to country estates, and once again, things get very nice.   In any case, we were able to safely navigate our way out of the city, although a bit precariously at times.

After 2 days of cool and rainy weather, Sunday was a very clear and warm day. When we left the hotel at 8:30 am, the tempurture was around 65 degrees.  By the time we arrived at our final destination, it was 83 degrees.  When you are climbing up mountains, 83 degrees is very warm.

After getting out of Florence, most of our walk today was through vineyards and olive groves, generally following the Arno river.  Just absolutely beautiful terrain.   

The walk today followed a familiar pattern for us.  We walked a total of about 16 miles, but passed through 4 or 5 villages along the way.  We stopped in one of the villages for a lite lunch and another just to have a cold drink.  We really enjoy this style of hiking, as it allows you to enjoy the countryside, while at the same time see people in the small towns.

I know that many of you are interested in libraries....well, perhaps not many, but my Mom and Dad are!  Following is a photo of an outdoor lending library in one of the small towns we walked through today:

We got lost several times....in one case, we ended up in a completely different town then we were aiming for.  Fortunately, we were able to talk to some local guy who helped us recover.  We probably walked an extra 2 miles and climbed an extra 500 feet due to getting lost.  Funny enough, we had some bicycle riders who stopped us to ask for directions today, as they were lost.  Sorry bub, you are asking the wrong people for directions here!

Finally, around 3:30, we arrived at our destination.  Our hotel was very nice today.  We decided to explore the town and we were lucky enough to discover a local festival going on!  One of the festival sponsors was the Ruffino winery, which is centered in Pontassieve.  Among the events was an Italian band playing Neil Young music! They were actually quite good.

Finally, it's time for a sports update.... (I think of this blog a little like the local news programs- a little news, some personal update, the weather and end with sports).  My World Champion San Francisco Giants had a good weekend, winning 3 out of 4 games from Cincinnati.  Hunter Pence returned to the line up on Saturdaynafter being out for the season with an injury and proceed to score 3 runs and hit a homerun.  Welcome back Hunter!  And the Warriors won the second round of their quest for an NBA championship.  

A view of the village of Pontassieve where we stayed tonight: