Day 15 - Terme di Miradolo to Piacenza - Monday June 29, 2015

Had a lovely night’s sleep, all the doors and windows open for lots of fresh air, screens on all the windows, and a ceiling fan. It was even beautifully quiet until around 4:30am when a bunch of people seemed to be going home, so we closed the door. We even got to sleep in because Max wasn’t coming to pick us up until 8:40am.

Our instructions for today started from Terme di Miraldo (even though we were transported here from Santa Cristina), but we got a ride with Max to Candelasco because we didn’t have a reservation for the ferry/water taxi to take us across and 4km down the Po river. In any event, with the ferry, it would have been 30km plus again today, and doing that 3 days in a row is 3 days too many.

The Albergo Castello in Terme di Miraldo was a lovely hotel, in a very upscale town, beside a pool/spa, full of beautiful people, and they played Italy’s equivalent to Hawaiian music 14 hours a day. The music started up at 8am this morning and it was turned off about 10pm last night.

There were a lot of pies at breakfast again, and they really know how to make pie dough in Italy.

Max arrived at 8:35am and we loaded up his 1980 (guess) Fiat with our luggage, backpacks, poles, and the three of us for another great driving adventure with Max. He never really stopped at stop signs, talked on his cell phone a lot, at one point he started reading our route notes while driving 110km an hour, and he drove no hands for a while putting on his seat belt. I’m sure he never wears a seat belt except he could see Russell and I were all buckled in and he must have felt conscientious. He, of course, was taking our suitcases to Piacenza, and believe me it was very tempting to just go along for the whole ride, but Russ would have been very disappointed in me.

The Po river is the longest and one of the main rivers in Italy. It was quite the bridge we drove over the Po getting to Candelasco. The whole ride was 40 minutes, but it seemed much longer. At one point Russell patted me on the shoulder, as if to say “want the front seat tomorrow?” Memories of riding in the  tour bus in Bejing.

After being cramped up in the car for that length of time, it took a while to get the legs and feet moving. I had asked Max to let us off at the church square Piazza de Bergamaschi (that’s when he read the route notes), but as soon as we got into Candelasco and Russ found where we were on the GPS, he said ‘you can let us off here’. Groan. And so it began for today’s walk.

We have left 161 km’s of rice fields behind. Today we walked past wheat, corn, beans, and now Roma tomato fields. 

But we still saw grey herons and bitterns, and have we mentioned the geckos? They are everywhere. And the barking dogs jumping on their fences?

At one point our route notes said that, if the river Trebbia is dry, we could ford the river and save 2km. It certainly looked dry, so we set out figuring out how to get down off the cliff we were on beside the river. We forded the river under an (at least) 23 span Roman type railway bridge, where it was obvious a homeless person was living. At one point you could see a wide section of the river, and I was getting worried that: a) that this was a great place for an ambush; and, b) the river would suddenly obstruct our passage. We ended up successfully fording the river, not getting robbed, and saving the 2 km. Yeah! However, it was obvious from the large pieces of concrete missing in the bridge supports that at times there was a mighty flow to the river.

Pretty much after that we were in the outskirts of Piacenza. A large town with a population of 100k (according to Max, and confirmed by the internet). Where we were after fording the river was completely not in sync with the route notes, but it was tracking the GPS. My feet were sore enough that I wasn’t in the mood for any extra kilometers due to errors, when lo and behold we came upon a MacDonald’s. I insisted we stop there (you’d never get me in a MacDonald’s in Canada). My reasons were fourfold: I had to go to the bathroom and the toilets in this stretch of Italy were all Chinese stand-up toilets – I fully expected the MacDonald’s toilets would be the sit down variety; we could have a lunch where you actually knew what you were ordering; I could rest my foot; and, we could figure out where we were.  After putting all our resources together, we figured out where we were and how to get to where we wanted to go. The meal was everything you could expect it to be, as were the toilets!

Today, again, we had what is becoming the usual hassle trying to find our hotel, and get into it. This time, we were staying in San Francesco B&B, on a street a block long. We finally found a street with the same name as the address of the B&B, but the B&B wasn’t on it (lucky the street was only a block long). It then took us another 1.4km, and help/not help from many locals to find a street that did have the place on it. We found an entrance to an apartment complex (liken in Vercelli), which said the B&B was there, but there was no buzzer. Out came some residents, we asked about the B&B, they said, no, it wasn’t there. We pointed to the sign, they shrugged, and let us in the lobby. We then made good use of our Vodaphone SIM card again, and called the number. The lady said, ‘I’ll meet you on the 6^th floor’. Wasn’t it just lucky we were actually in the locked lobby, courtesy of some kind and trusting residents! She spoke no English and our Italian is even worse. The whole business of having such a problem finding our accommodations is incredibly annoying, except the hardest ones to find end up being the nicest places, making it worth all the aggravation!!!

The lady gave us some excellent maps, water, fruit, and a coffee. This all because our room was being prepared. The apartment was a rooming house. There were three bedrooms, only two occupied. We had our own bathroom, but it was down the hall. Keys galore, to the door in the lobby, to the apartment, to our room, and to our bathroom. The room was lovely, there was a large dining room, a beautiful deck overlooking a major piazza with a palace and church, just up from the Cathedral

, right beside a supermercato. We had a shower, then we went to the cathedral and got our credenzias stamped, had gelato, and picked up dinner at the supermercato. This is a very big town so dinner is not included. A wonderful opportunity to eat simple, and light.

We then sat out on the deck, moving our chairs and table as necessary to dodge the sun, and did the blog.

 Our roommate came home around 7:30pm with a pizza. She too sat on the deck, offering us some pizza, but we were full. She teaches voice at the university, and was preparing her students for exams on Wednesday. A soprano. Sounds like her time is divided, and this is where she stays when in Piacenza.

Unfortunately the walk was almost all along asphalt again today, so even though it only ended up being 13.7km, my feet are killing me. Today it was 32 degrees. Tomorrow is 23km, and 34 degrees. We have walked 285km out of 326km so far and have 706km (according to the route notes) to go. This is another place where it would be nice to have another day.