Day 6 – Robbio to Garlasco, Italy – 35km
A couple days ago, in Santhià, I was visiting the Chiesa di Sant’Agata in the center. It’s a lovely neoclassical structure, more hulking than graceful, but it’s not entirely devoid of the latter. An older man stood outside as I entered, and he followed me in soon after. He tailed me for a bit, but […]
Tour d’Italia, Day 5 – Santhià to Robbio, Italy – 46km
The route is drunk. Not just a little tipsy, but straight up blottoed. It looks bad enough on a map, zigzagging north and south across the SP11. Heck, there are two points when it heads west on this ostensibly eastward-moving march. Blame the rice paddies, not the route-makers. These swampy, boggy grounds, and I’ll use […]
Tour d’Italia, Day 4 – Ivrea to Santhià, Italy – 37km
I pride myself on my stealthy extrication from crowded pilgrim dorms in the early morning, so I bore a thoroughly shamefaced expression as I descended the stairs, after the bedroom door caught on the floor midway and then shrieked as I pushed it the necessary distance. I’ve thought for years about carrying a can of […]
Tour d’Italia, Part 2 – Days 2 & 3 – Aosta to Ivrea, Italy – 84km
There are only so many viable ways to cross the Alps; it makes sense that those few privileged pathways would suffer for their accessibility. And indeed, my whole walk over the Grand Saint Bernard Pass and through the Aosta Valley has followed one scene after another of remarkable carnage, along with strategic hilltops dotted with […]
Tour d’Italia, Part 2 – Day 1 – Bourg-Saint-Pierre to Aosta, Italy – 41km
I sprang to life at 3am. I negotiated with consciousness for 15 minutes before throwing in the towel and rising. Fortunately, the place had a kettle. My rising wasn’t solely a function of the curious mixture of jet lag and adrenaline that announces each new walk; rather, the support team for a group of priests […]
Tour d’Italia, Part 2 – Day 0 – Bourg-Saint-Pierre
Even Lake Geneva has an off-day sometimes. And admittedly, most places in the world aspire to be Lake Geneva on an off-day. Regardless, I’ve been here enough to know better. In place of a shimmering luminescence, the lake’s surface was dull and desultory. The wall of mountains launching skyward across the way proved oddly inscrutable, […]
Cammino Via Flavia – Nuts & Bolts
As this is the shortest of the routes that I followed on this walk, there’s not as much to say about the Cammino Via Flavia, but here’s a quick rundown of some key takeaways: The Via Flavia runs from Lazzaretto, next to the Slovenian border, to Aquileia, covering 116km. The organizers break it into five […]
Days 79-82 – Udine to Aquileia to Trieste to Slovenia – 171km
“Do you like Elon Musk?” Even in Northern Italy, so close to the Doge’s Palace and so far from DOGE, it’s a loaded query. I ducked the question, noting that the answer is more complicated than a couple years ago. My host in Udine offered an impenetrable expression in return and proceeded to play a […]
Day 78 – Gemona del Friuli to Udine – 39km
Plans shifted late in the game, but it was all for the best. Originally, I had anticipated a much longer walk today, pushing all the way to Palmanova, but the only affordable accommodation in that popular tourist spot cancelled on me. Udine, the largest city in Friuli, suddenly became the better fit, and once I […]
Day 77 – San Tomaso to Gemona del Friuli – 23km
“There are two Friulis,” my host Paola explained to me in San Tomaso. “Before the earthquake and after.” My mind immediately drew a series of inferences from that statement. Life must have been good before the 1976 earthquake that devastated the region. Registering 6.5 was bad enough; hitting a maximum intensity on the EMS scale […]