Day 43 - Montefiascone to Viterbo - Monday July 27, 2015

We had supper last night at the Al Panino restaurant. Sounded like Al Pacino. It was an excellent dinner, lots of vegetables and another bottle of Est Est Est. The waitress was a beautiful Ukrainian girl and Russell asked if she’d like to marry our son, but she had come to Italy with her Italian boyfriend.

Last night was another example of sleeping with a poorly working air conditioner rather than opening the window and letting in the cool fresh air. The Hotel Urban V provided information on what to expect from the air conditioner, namely cooling of 6 degrees compared to the room temperature. That is exactly what all these air conditioners have been doing, and when the temperature is 40 degrees, that’s not very good.

We were down at breakfast at 7:25am and they had a lovely buffet. The blood orange juice they served was squeezed blood oranges. Delicious!

We left at 8am and I know you won’t believe it but we actually followed the route notes all day. They were clear and easy to follow and we never once got lost! It was a miracle. I kept expecting to wake up and find it was just a dream.

The main reason we started following the route notes is because the GPS was not working well getting out of town. This may have been because the route notes (and presumably the GPS) were taking the most scenic, totally inefficient, and longest route possible out of town. However, we kept having wonderful views of the cupola of Santa Margherita, the Rocca, and the town all day.

Cathedral Santa Margherita’s history is tied to the history of several Popes, including Urban V, who is considered Montefiascone’s main benefactor. He was responsible for a radical transformation of the fortress to host the pontifical court and the title of diocese. When Pope Urban V established the Diocese of Montefiascone in 1396, the church that was the most popular and most central was chosen to be the cathedral of the new diocese, after which major reconstruction began. The building of the Cathedral of Santa Margherita is dated from the 15^th and 16^th centuries. It is next to the Rocca, in the upper part of the city and has one of the largest domes in Italy, built by Vignola.

Most of the day we were on the old Via Cassia, an important Roman road. 

It was very moving to walk for several kilometers on a stretch of ancient, original Roman pavement. Think of how many pilgrims have walked that stretch of road over the centuries. Think of the expertise of the worker’s that built that road, which has lasted for thousands of years.

As we walked it reminded me of something in the route notes from the day we walked from Radicofani to Procena. At one point of the VF you were walking along a ridge and the route notes said ‘this ridge is probably the route most pilgrims would usually have taken doing the via Francigena’. Wow, what does that say!

We also passed the thermal pools of Bagnacci. The water is milky green and steaming. We were able to stop there for a break for free and purchase a cold drink. It was 5 euros to bathe. There were quite a few bathers there, so it is obviously a popular spot.

There are a lot of loose dogs along the Way now, which Beppe warned us of when we met with him in Siena, but for the most part they are well behaved. The smaller the dog the more high strung it seems to be.

Russell took a picture of the perimeter of a typical house (in this case a mansion) along the VF. You’d have to be pretty desperate to ask for water here.

Viterbo is a pretty big city, and walking through all the traffic circles along busy roads with cars racing along has convinced us that we are not walking into Rome on Saturday. That would be suicide by stress.

We ended up walking 20.4km and climbing a mere 491 meters today. We arrived at 1pm and it was 34 degrees. Overall a pleasant walk, except for the last 4km or so as we got into a lot of busy traffic in Viterbo.

The route notes led us seamlessly to our hotel. Even though it was a bit complicated they were easy to follow. Amazing, 4 days of walking left and the route notes get readable! Of course, tomorrow is another day. It sort of takes away the excitement of always having to worry and wonder if you are completely lost.

This time our hotel is out of the historic part of town, having exited through Porta Romana. It is a 4 star hotel and looks very new and modern. We got a drink and ate our picnic lunch at the outside tables of the bar before coming up to our room, because by this time it was 1:30pm and we hadn’t stopped to eat on route. The lobby and stairs were all marble but the halls carpeted, as well as the rooms. Maybe one or two other places we have stayed so far (night 45) have had carpet. It’s not good, in my opinion, because you can’t wash a carpet every day!

We got all settled and had turned our room upside down when I discovered an army of ants under my backpack, where I had put it on the floor. I wondered if they had hitched a ride up from the patio where we had lunch (memories of all the ants on the floor of the laundry mat in Gimignano), and began the painstaking process of emptying everything out of my backpack; de-anting and washing the backpack and all of its’ contents; and, killing as many ants as possible that were crawling around where the backpack had been on the floor. Russell kept saying we had gotten all of them, which is his way of trying to deny they ever existed. I kept finding them surface from the pile of the carpet. I decided that the theory of me transporting them in on my backpack could be tested by looking for them in other areas of the room. I walked about and found they were everywhere to be found, including on the carpeted baggage rack my suitcase was lying open on.

So we packed everything up, of course the room would need to be remade by this point, and went downstairs and told the two people at the reception the bad news. They didn’t understand what ‘ants’ were, and Russell hauled out his phone and turned it on to do an English/Italian translate. Before he got it all ready for the task I had gotten the point across. The lady asked if they were just in the bathroom, and I said no, they were in the carpet, I hadn’t seen any in the bathroom.

We got a new room, which isn’t nearly as big or nice as the one we had. Russell was whining about this, but we couldn’t stay there, so get over it! I haven’t found any ants here.