Today’s hike, and I mean HIKE, since the way was almost entirely up and then down with little traversing, was both glorious and (of course) exhausting. Unlike yesterday’s long distance, today we hiked only 9 miles, but I was very happy to find our bizarre little apartment at the bottom of a (seriously) excruciating windy hill.
The amazing thing is that we actually went up and down this hill again, due to the need for our apres hike beer. You can tell because Annie is showered and looking quite good.
We had found the city hall our directions dropped us off at, but then had to resort to my GPS to discover where next to go to find our Agriturismo ChiuAgri. As we headed down the street, a man in a car stopped us: “Please!” It was our concierge, who motioned for us to wait; he had to get the key. He returned with a young man named Giorgio, who spoke some English, and who led us down down down a narrow street. Alas the photo doesn’t show it well enough. But there at the end is our apartment for the night: dark, dank, and bright green. Pink bedspreads on the narrow twin below, with a fulll bed above in the loft. Since Annie had the twin for the kids last night, I get them tonight.
The color is actually a brighter Prell green than this looks in the photo. It seems a big Mistake.
But I am starting at the end of the day. We had a glorious day. The weather was perfect–sunny and not too warm (the vistas kept coming and coming, over beautiful hills filled with olive trees, grape vines, even some of what I think were walnuts. Every so often we came upon a shrine, or odd pool with, as below, something unusual about it. I’m just going to shower you photos give you some idea of the glory of our day.
It turns out we had not actually passed through Poggio San Lorenzo yesterday, so we started with that today. What a great little place! Totally charming, some of the apartments were actually built on top of an old Roman wall! And I worry about the age of OUR foundation.
A close up of Roman brickwork
Shrine
There were several public cisterns, or wells, or whatever they were along the walk today. Here was a surprising pool, beautifully kept up, with a gremlin spouting the water
Lots and lots of olive trees!
This was our wonderland Trail, our Eden of the day: slightly downhill, dirt path scattered with tiny oak leaves. Lizards skittered on the edges. Views opened up periodically. We were cool and happy.
Alas, Eden turned to Hell all too quickly, and we had a long slog up the worst kind of path–a couple times during the day.
We did a side tour to find a cafe to have lunch, as suggested by our literature. Alas the directions were too scant and we ended up adding at least a mile to our day–but we got our shared panini and a sweet place to sit outside.
The view over fields below from our high perch at lunch.
And just to end at the beginning, here we are looking forward to day that began with what we begin to realize is typical for breakfast here: Annie gets a largish pot of tea, and I am forced to ask, with some embarrassment but definite need for a second caffe latte.
What a great day to read about! You two seem to have it worked out well, with apres hike beers and taking turns on the better bed. Loved the detail photos of the Roman wall and olives growing. That view from your lunch perch looks worth the extra mile. Thanks for another delightful blog.