My, it’s great to be walking again!

Sunday, we were raring to start our trek, so we strapped on our packs and started out fairly early. Our goal was Carrara, where we had booked at a B&B.

This part of Italy is serious marble country; some of the best marble in the world is from Carrara. As we walked, we could see the white marble veins in the mountains where it is quarried.The walk went well, partly along a canaland partly in the hills.Pilgrims are common here; at one point there was a notebook on a gate asking pilgrims where they are from and where they are going.This is very late in the season, though, and we didn’t see any fellow travelers on Sunday. There are lots during the summer, though, and the Via Francigena is well marked, mostly with little white and red stickers.A few kilometers out of Carrara we passed by a winery which looked very nice. Feeling we should not neglect our study of Italian culture, we stopped in for a quick visit. One part of the winery was doing a booming business filling jugs and other containers for the locals, directly from very large wood barrels. Another part was devoted to providing tastings, and purchases, of their higher end wines. Since we had a few kilometers to go before we slept, we only tasted two wines, both of which were outstanding.Our first adventure of this year’s walk occurred later that afternoon when we found that there was no posted “Via Toniolo 8 bis”, the address where the B&B was supposed to be. There was a “Via Toniolo 8” which was a small apartment building but it had no reference on the list of apartments to the B&B or its owner. We called the B&B but got a recording. We left a message, but got no reply. After a while, we tried again, with the same result.

It was a Sunday afternoon, so pretty much everything was closed. We went to Plan B, which is to go to the train station if one is nearby (which was the case). In Italy, there is a reasonable chance of finding a bar open at the station, even on Sunday night, and, if all else fails, you can catch a train and go somewhere else.

At the station, as hoped, we found an open bar, where we took off our packs and sat down with a glass of wine. We called the B&B again, got the recording, and left another message.

We called booking.com, and they said they would try to contact the B&B. About 20 minutes later the B&B called, apologized for not responding sooner, and agreed to have someone meet us at Via Toniolo 8. It turned out that 8 bis is not marked, and to get there you go through a break in a gate, cross a parking area, and find a house.

Once we were in, the B&B was pretty nice. We showered, put on clean clothes, and found the nearby Locanda dei Pellegrini, which was open (there were no pellegrini, or pilgrims, but lots of Italian men watching a soccer match), had another glass of wine, and reminisced on how often what seemed like crises on the road, had worked out just fine.