Day 3- Etroubles to Aosta - Wednesday June 17, 2015

Day 3 Etroubles to Aosta June 17,2015

We requested breakfast for 7am which the hosts thought was too early but agreed to. We showed up at around 7:12 and they both pointed at their watches! It was a lovely breakfast with all my favorite foods but yogurt. After breakfast the owner asked if we wanted to go back to Etroubles at 8am or 10am. That seemed a bit funny after we wanted breakfast so early, but he took us at 8am.  Lots of handshakes and best wishes with the German pilgrim. The walk from Etroubles to Gignod was lovely – they had obviously very recently (2014) constructed/rehabilitated a trail along a Ruz (ancient irrigation system)

 that went through the woods along the mountains with spectacular views of the surrounding valley and mountains. It took us 2.5 hours to get back to our Hotel Bellevue, which included stopping at a bar for a powerade and finishing our leftover pizza from dinner last night. The Bellevue Hotel lady was outside when we walked by and we all waved and she said her husband had taken our bags to the next hotel already.

Getting to Aosta today involved a rather massive descent of 825 meters, at times very steep, which is very hard on the knees, quads, and toes. 

We also did some major ups and downs for the sake of avoiding major highways – the cost of being safe- and had some problems with the instructions, which usually make perfect sense once you know where to go!

There was one major flaw with the instructions.  At the end they left us at a large roundabout, said ‘Aosta town centre is 10 minutes away’, and gave no clue as to how to get to our hotel.

We asked one lady who called someone but couldn’t help, and then asked a young man who was very helpful and basically took us by the hand and led us through the old part of the city, explained some of the major points of interest and pointed out how to get to our hotel and where to find a vodaphone store.  He spoke very basic English and between that and our French we did very well.

Of course we always arrive during siesta, so we located the closed vodaphone store, found our hotel, and checked in and got cleaned up.

We walked 19.4 km today.

Aosta was settled in proto-historic times and later became a centre of the Salassi, a pre-Roman population that was killed or sold into slavery by the Romans in 25BC, who then founded the Roman colony of Augusta Praetoria Salassorum. After 11 BC Aosta became the capital of the Grey Alps province of the Empire.

The ancient town walls of the city are still preserved almost entirely

, as is the east and south gate, the Roman Theatre

, a triumphal arch in honour of Augustus built to celebrate the victory of the Romans over the Salassi, the Sant’Orso complex, a Roman bridge, a Forum and cryptoporticus

 … So we spent about 2.5 hours sightseeing this afternoon, and we got a SIM card for one of the phones.

Tomorrow the honeymoon is over – 26km (not including the vast distance from our hotel back to the via Francigena) 840m uphill climb and 890 meter downhill climb. At least we now have a phone, and we have the daily gps tracks for every day starting tomorrow for the rest of the walk.