Day 41 - Procena to Bolsena- Saturday July 25, 2015

The townsfolk of Procena are very civilized. The grand garlic festival never got too out of control. The highlight was the mobile disco wagon which consisted of a cutout 45 gallon drum attached to a motorcycle as a side car. One man was driving the motorcycle and the singer was riding in the drum. The drum had large speakers mounted to it and a flashing disco ball attached. They drove up and down the street with the singer belting out traditional songs of the area. 
Mobile Disco Cycle
He actually had a great voice, but he was no Valentino, that’s for sure!

We went to bed at 10:30pm, and we both fell asleep right away (ie, the noise wasn’t bad enough to keep us awake, even with our window wide open onto the main drag). I woke up at 1am and the city was quiet, although Russell says they had packed it in by midnight. Not like the bars in Spain where the carrying on would go until 3am on a week night and all night if there was festival of any sort.

We are so used to getting up early we were both up at 6am even though we could have slept in. I got thinking that if they were going to bring breakfast to our room at 7am, we could just go to the restaurant. I checked out the winter restaurant at 6:45am but the door was closed.

I left the door to the building and the door to our room open, and Giovanni’s wife Pucci, arrived promptly at 7am with a large picnic basket from which she extracted another two sided basket, one with a thermos of coffee, another with a thermos of hot milk; a jug of blood orange juice; a basket of bread; two jars of homemade jam; yogurt; corn flakes; and a cutting board with cheese and ham wrapped in saran wrap. She got two place mats and all of the dishes and cutlery we would need out of the cupboards and set a lovely table for us in about two minutes. She is just totally gracious and hospitable. I told her we could have gone to the restaurant for breakfast and she said, ‘this is simpler’.

I was wondering if Valarian was going to come for the bags, when a heard a faint knocking. I went to the door of the building, which Pucci must have closed, and there he was. I asked if he didn’t want to just come to the door of the apartment, but he said he hadn’t gone to the restaurant first so didn’t have the key. He took out the bags to the car. We said our good-byes to Pucci and Valarian. I got the impression it was her family that has owned the castle for 250 years. She said the next time we come she’ll give us a tour of the castle. I think she was too busy getting ready for the festival yesterday. It came out in the conversation that you had to have reservations to eat at her place yesterday, and the dinner was not free. It was free for us because our dinner was included.

The first thing we did in the car is discuss where he was going to let us off. There were a number of options, which (based on the final maximum total which in the end was 32km) would have resulted in us saving 6km, 10km, or 17km. He suggested taking us to San Lorenzo Nuovo, because it would be easiest for him to drop us off there (in a piazza) and it was going to be hot today. I agreed because it was getting late to be starting on a hot day and this was our last day ‘off’ before Rome. It is 41 degrees at 6pm, so it would have been way too hot to walk 34km today.

 Instead of the van Giovanni picked us up in yesterday, today he drove us in the Audi. I was worried the Audi would go a lot faster but his driving was pretty consistent with yesterday. Being Saturday, there was a multitude of bicycles on the road, which he kept saying was so dangerous every time he passed a group of them. The bicycles tend to ride in groups, and two or even three abreast. With these Italian driver’s screaming around corners on all the hairpin bends it’s a miracle there are any bicycle riders left in this country.

Further to our conversation with the B&B owner in Rocca d’Orcia the other day, Giovanni said the churches used to be open all the time when they all had their own priest. Now that most of them don’t have their own priest, they aren’t open, even from 10am to 12. He said vandalism is a problem too, but that is related to the church not having a priest.

Just before Giovanni dropped us off in the square in San Lorenzo Nuovo, we were stopped behind a bus letting people on and off, and three pilgrims got off the bus. We recognized them from Radicofani. We passed all of them along the way today. The one couple, who looked about our age, is from France, and started in Piacenza (where we were on day 16); the other young female we only saw from a distance, she was sitting on a bench in a park, and we all waved.

It was 8am when we set out from the piazza in San Lorenzo Nuovo and within five minutes we got our first glimpse of Lake Bolsena,

a very popular lake in the largest volcanic crater in Italy, which began to collect 370 thousand years ago. Roman records indicate activity as recent as 104BC. Our hotel for today is on the lake. Our walk was primarily on secondary roads today, with a lot of shade, at times walking through an arch of trees.

I didn’t once consult the route notes today after leaving the piazza until we got to the old part of Bolsena. The GPS was tracking our route and there were lots of Via Francigena signs and way marks along the way (although we know that can be misleading). I didn’t miss trying to decipher the code. Russell has a theory about the route notes. He thinks they are written in Yoda speak, from Star Wars.

We did a lot of sightseeing in the old part of Bolsena as we went through today. We went into the first church as we entered; passed the  imposing Rocca Monaldeschi Della Cervara (12^th-15^th century) castle; 

went to the information Centre and got a stamp, a map, and found out where our hotel was; and visited the Santa Cristina Basilica.

The Santa Cristina Church is related to the holy blood miracle. Corpus Domini, also known as the ‘Miracle of Bolsena’ occurred in 1263 when a German priest named Peter of Prague stopped in Bolsena to hold mass above the tomb of Santa Cristina while on a pilgrimage to Rome. Peter however doubted the transubstantiation, but as he readied himself to give communion the bread turned blood red; the liquid then spilled onto the white altar cloth, forming a stain that resembled the profile of Jesus, as well as onto the marble floor and into the grotto of St. Cristina, where the stain can still be seen today. The Archbishop ordered the building of the Orvieto Duomo to remember the Miracle and every year the church celebrates the Corpus Domini.

It was a very ornate, beautiful church but it wasn’t doing anything for me from a spiritual perspective. There was an overpowering smell of burning candles, and a monk and a priest about who just didn’t seem very devote. We could have visited the grotto of St. Cristina and seen the stain for 4 euros each, but I just couldn’t stand the smell and we left. There were a lot of people visiting the church.

We walked to our hotel along a large, beautiful, tree lined boulevard. Bolsena is a very popular beach resort, with a lot of hotels and tourists everywhere. The lady said our room wouldn’t be ready for an hour, so we went to the bar and ate the home made lunch we had carried on the walk. After an hour we came up, but the room still wasn’t ready, so we went into the unmade room, put on our bathing suits, placed our suitcases and backpacks in the room and our valuables in the room safe, and went swimming in the lake. It reminded us of swimming in Lake Ontario at Sandbanks Provincial Park. Lots of waves, except this was a lot warmer and had slightly less seaweed in the water. The hotel also has a lovely pool, but we wanted to swim in the famous lake. I was just a bit worried about my lovely, purple, Italian bathing suit. Swimming in Lake Ontario I only wear my oldest bathing suit! But it seems to have survived all right. We really enjoyed our hour and a half of bobbing in the waves.

Then back to a pilgrim’s life of laundry and showering, then we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on our balcony relaxing and blogging. Supper was institutional, according to Russell. Okay, feeding the masses, but nothing outstanding