Current Day Trip to Date
Miles Walked 22.1 224.8
Feet Climbed 2360 26,630
Song of the Day: Waiting on a Sunny Day by Bruce Springsteen
I'm waitin', waitin' on a sunny day
Gonna chase the clouds away
Waitin' on a sunny day
Well, we finally got the sun today! We have indeed been waiting for this sunny day for over a week now. This was a long day of hiking. First, the hike itself was a little over 18 miles. Then we spent several hours exploring the beautiful town of Gubbio. We had never heard of this place before today, but it is a very well preserved town dating back to ancient times. We visited several museums, churches, and other sites during our tour of Gubbio today. More about that later. We are staying in a very nice hotel, adding to the overall pleasure of the day.
We were able to get an early start on the day, leaving our room at 7:30. We passed lots of people on the trail today, including two college girls from North Carolina, a bunch of Italians,many of course many more Austrians. We ended up walking with two Austrian women and a guy from Switzerland for a couple of hours today. As always, we enjoy hearing their stories. Here are a couple of photos from the trail today, including the ever popular photos with animals:
Today's song is one of many terrific songs from Springsteen's Rising album. It is an outstanding album in and of itself, but was a particularly cathartic piece of work ip during the post 911 period. Two days ago, when we were walking with another Austrian couple, the guy (norbert) is telling me how 911 was the greatest attack in the history of the world by a politician on his own people. He said that "they" (I guess meaning some Europeans) had studied the World Trade Center falling down and determined that the planes could not have brought those buildings down. Their conclusion was that the attack was engineered by Bush and Cheney as a predicate for the Iraq war. While I had heard of these kinds of stories being repeated in the Middle East, I was surprised to hear that there are people in Austria (what I generally think of as a reasonably rational part of the world) that buy into this stuff. Personally, it offended the hell out of me and and I had to hold myself back from reacting to him.
On a more pleasant note, we have had some of our readers from Utah (that would be you Colleen!) ask for photos of Gnomes....well, you asked, and you shall receive. The always popular Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs:
One of the stories from Gubbio deals with St Francis and the Wolf. Here is the story of the wolf, per wiki:
The wolf of Gubbio was a wolf that, according to the Fioretti di San Francesco,[1]terrorized the Umbrian city of Gubbio until it was tamed by St. Francis of Assisi acting on behalf of God. The story is one of many in Christian narrative that depict holy persons exerting influence over animals and nature, a motif common to hagiography.
And here is a statue of this event:
The patron saint of Gubbio is St Ubaldus. Once again, we turn to the fountain of truth, wiki:
Ubald of Gubbio (Italian: Ubaldo; Latin: Ubaldus; French: Ubalde; ca. 1084–1160) was a medieval bishop of Gubbio, in Umbria, today venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church.....The devotion to the saint is very popular throughout Umbria, but especially at Gubbio, where in every family at least one member is called Ubaldo.
Gotta wonder about those only children families....must be a lot of Ubalado's in Gubbio. Funny, as I have gotten older, people have said to me "U bald(o)"? Ok, a weak stab at Catholic humor, but here I am with old baldy himself:
We also visited a couple of interesting museums today. Here is a photo of 7 old things and one relatively young thing:
The old things are 7 are tablets from the 3rd century BC.
Here is the inside of the cathedral from the 12 century. Fantastic arches.
Finally, one other photo from the town today. I seriously thought about making the song of the days"highway to hell" by AC/DC in honor of this sign, but decided it was too nice of day and town for this!:
No comments:
Post a Comment