Sunday, November 3, 2013

Walking with Angels. Campagno di Roma to La Storta

We went down to the restaurant at 7:30pm last night. We sat there for thirty minutes and no one even came to the table even though we were the only ones there. Finally Signor shows up and takes our order. The Italians never come into the restaurants before 8pm. When we finished our pasta dish the Signor wants us to settle our hotel bill at the same time. He says that they will give us a discount because the cook will not be able to be here in the morning. Then he comes back to the table and says the discount is 10E therefore the hotel bill is 65E. I was sorry to have to tell him that we were quoted 60E without breakfast. Then he wanted to know to whom we had spoken to when we made the reservation. This was going nowhere. Then he went away again after not getting a satisfactory answer. Then he came back and says the Signora remembers now and the 60E is correct. All the while he was ignoring the other customers. It was all quite amusing. I went out at 6:45am this morning and found a place for breakfast and noted our track out of town. It had rained last night but was now just overcast. We knew we had about 25k to go today with not too difficult a terrain. We had heard about a dangerous river crossing and wondered what that was all about. Perhaps if one fell in while crossing on the rocks it could be deemed dangerous as the water was relatively deep. We knew we had seen much more dangerous situations than this one. It rained again today which means fewer photos. We averaged our usual 4 km and hour net after stops and arrived in La Storta at 1pm. We quickly found our lodging with the sisters at Instituto Figlie de Nostra, Signira del Sacro Cuore at 1826 Via Cassia. The sisters were very welcoming and we paid for half board with the evening meal included at 74E. The laundry lady commented about this being the last day to wash socks. I just published the last few days while here with the sisters. The setting here is like a park and the building spotless. They kind of set me back when they asked what we wanted to eat. I know now what they wanted to know is what we wanted for the first course before the meat or second course. When I answered spaghetti they nodded okay. The meal tonight was really good. I was a little taken back by C. She had said earlier that she was absolutely starving, but I didn't think she meant that literally. There wasn't a crumb left on the table. As we come down to the last walking day tomorrow, we talked about how it feels after all the mental and physical up and downs we have had on this journey. Such good times and with so many people who helped us on a daily basis. The very few pilgrims we have met along the way, perhaps 6 or 7. The last image we have of those pilgrims we met. A lot of memories to bring back a smile to our faces when the topic comes up.


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