Day 11 - Vercelli to Mortara - Thursday June 25, 2015

Today is our planned day off. The walk continues through rice paddies, has no shade, is boring, my feet are sore, and we need a rest day every ten days at least.

The checkout time for our room is 11am, so we let ourselves sleep in. At about 8:45 Claudia opened the door, saw we were still in bed, and left.

At that point it dawned on me that everywhere we stay, they expect our bags to be ready by around 8am for transport to the next hotel. I had forgotten about that. The only saving grace was that I knew our hotel for today was close to the train station and we could take them ourselves if we had to.

At about 10:30am Claudia came back, and we told her my foot was sore and we were going to take the train to our next hotel. She said her son was transporting our bags and we could get a ride with her son. It was a good thing we agreed with that because my hotel voucher was not for the right hotel, or even city today as the bag transfer was going to– this came out in the wash because the bags were going to San Michele Albergo in Mortara and my hotel voucher was for Hotel La Mondina in Robbio. Mortara is 16km farther from where we were in Vercelli than Robbio, which was 22km away. Hence, if we hadn’t taken the day off, we would have had to walk 38km from Vercelli to Mortara today!

Her son studies chemistry and physics at the university, and is having exams now. He is Catholic and said he only goes to church for Christmas and Easter, and he thinks the church has to become with the times (aka - stop discriminating against homosexuals) or people will just stop going. He is very disillusioned with the scandals etc that have plagued the church, thinks the church was just political all along, and thinks religion shouldn’t be part of the educational system. Sounds pretty typical for a young person (and a lot of us old people too).

Our hotel is nice, and Mortara is nice, with lots of ancient tourist attractions. We did walk through the town, but I really want to rest my foot, so spent most of the day blogging! Can you tell?

Tomorrow may be a train ride to Garlasco. 20km of rice paddies and no shade is not too alluring, but it really depends on my foot.

We went for supper at 7:30pm and lo and behold in walked Louis, the German pilgrim. Big hugs all around! He, of course had walked the 38km here today, and was very sunburned.

Later at dinner we got talking to two fellows from Bangladesh who were here to discuss selling uniforms to the municipality. What a conversation that was! Things are very desperate for people in that country.

Whatever we decide to do tomorrow, our bags must be downstairs by 8am.