Day 12 - Mortara to Garlasco - Friday June 26, 2015

After supper we asked the owner for another chair so we could sit out on the veranda and he laughed and said ‘you know we are surrounded by flooded rice fields, in half an hour you won’t be able to sit outside because the mosquitos are terrible.’ Russ launched into how he’s from Winnipeg, Manitoba – the worst place in the world for mosquitos. We got a chair and sat outside for about an hour until the prophecy came true. In fact, I then noticed that there were actually screens on the windows – something we had never seen before in Europe.

I had noticed a very perfumed smell in the room, but didn’t think about it seriously enough (scents can give me a migraine headache) before going to bed. The air conditioner worked really well, so no need to open any windows. I woke up around 3am with a major headache and it wasn’t until around 6am I saw the room deodorizer wick sitting in a shelf in the night table right beside my bed! Needless to say that thing made a quick trip out onto the veranda.

Unfortunately by that time I had a full blown migraine, with the accompanying nausea and the whole nine yards. Luckily I have discovered that my accuball, used to cure back and muscle problems, is highly effective in getting rid of headaches too. You just lie with the ball under your neck in strategic locations and in several hours it is gone. I started using that at 6am.

Russell got the bags downstairs by 8am and I managed to basically get rid of the headache by around 8:30am.

After all that we decided to take the train to Garlasco. My foot is actually still reasonably sore today, and Russell wasn’t too keen on walking for 20km through rice fields in the heat and blaring sun. It’s 28 today.

The owner had told us he would leave no later than 8am with the bags, but he didn’t actually get going until around 9am. I walked over to the train station and procured two tickets to Galasco for 9:36am, which collectively cost 4.8 euros.

When I got back to the hotel the two fellows from Bangladesh were down for breakfast and they kept affectionately calling me mom. We had a ton of pictures taken on everybody’s cameras and phones, hugs, and then they were off with their contact for meetings and a tour of the rice fields today, then off to Milan tomorrow. What they do is provide the equipment to make the clothes. The one fellow knew right away there were two universities in Ottawa, and mentioned Waterloo, but his English was very minimal and I didn’t pursue that line of conversation.

It was a lovely, 21 minute train ride to Garlasco, which is an agricultural and industrial center in the Lomellina area, 21 kilometres from Pavia, the main town of the province of Pavia. It was assigned as a feud to the Pavese monastery of San Salvatore in 981 A.D. by Ottone II and then, in the 14th century, passed under the rule of the Visconti and was incorporated into the dukedom of Milan.

In 1370, it was almost completely destroyed by the troops of the marquis Giovanni di Monferrato. Involved in the 2nd war of independence (1859), it was severely damaged by Austrian soldiers.

Macs provided us with a map of Garlasco, making it very easy to find our hotel from the train station. We have a very lovely room in a fairly new building beside the hotel, which is like being in a motel, but our room opens onto a court yard, not a parking lot. They have a laundry room and outdoor clothes line so I washed all sorts of stuff, inspired by access to an iron and ironing board. The lady asked if I wanted to use the washing machine and dryer but she had a great production of washing sheets on the go so I said no thanks. Not to mention the difficulty I would have had trying to figure out what settings to use, all labelled in Italian!

After the laundry was all hung to dry we wandered through the town.

The shops in Garlasco are very trendy and nice, and I bought a (very fashionable) bathing suit so I can use the pool at the hotels which have one (several do). The pool at Hotel Royal in Viverone was very enticing, but I had no bathing suit!

The most representative monuments in Garlasco are the hospice of S. Anna, founded in the 19th century; the church of Santa Maria Assunta, constructed in the 18th century based on plans by the architect Regina; the church of the SS. Trinita in Baroque style which was reconstructed in 1712 on the site of the pre-existent, more ancient building, and the 17th century church of San Rocco which was severely damaged by the actions of French troops in 1813.
The Saint Maria Assunta church in the Piazza della Repubblica is absolutely gorgeous. The remembrance chapels have been constructed with stunningly beautiful marble. The church is very obviously still in regular use, which was very pleasing, somehow, and hopeful.

Had we spent four hours walking the 20 km to get here today, we would have gone through the Bosco del Vignolo oasis, which is a natural reserve within the bounds of the Ticino Park, covering some 24 hectares. The variety of surroundings is reflected in the richness of the fauna and flora. In fact, it is possible to find robinia, planes, black poplar, elder, various species of ferns, reeds and marsh lilies. Amongst the birds, only the bittern nests here, but one can also observe grey herons, nitticore and garzette.

I failed to mention earlier that we saw a pair of grey heron the day we walked from Ivrae to Viverone, and we have seen a lot of bittern since we started walking through rice fields, which we first encountered on our walk from Viverone to Santhia.

Tomorrow we walk 27km to Pavia, the main city in the province of Pavia.