Stage 19: San Miniato to Altopascio — June 11, 2022

 29 km — 32^oC and sunny — We met 5 more pilgrims on their way to Rome.

(By Jim)

In golf it’s called a mulligan.  I’m not sure what it’s called on the VF, but as we sit on a train speeding toward Florence, golf is the best metaphor I can come up with.

We fully intended to walk Stage 19 from San Miniato to Altopascio and when we checked into Convento San Francesco, we requested a boxed breakfast so we could leave at 5:00 and get an early start.  Laurel’s knees were giving her some grief and she only had one brace.  Walking had become her version of playing favorites, supporting one knee over the other.  Descending the stone steps to the convent’s dining hall for supper told me we needed to scale down our ambitions for the next day.  We decided to sleep in until 7:00, take breakfast in the convent, walk into San Miniato Bassio, and buy bus tickets to get us out of the city asphalt, while also purchasing another knee brace along the way.

As we left San Miniato and wound our way down the streets, we met a young New Zealander heading up the hill.  He was lost and asked for directions to Gambassi Terme.  Laurel provided clear instructions to get him back on track as I calculated the 5 extra kilometers that he had added to his day’s trek.  He was cheerful and thanked us as he plodded back up the very steep hill to San Miniato.  “Oh, to be young again,” Laurel remarked;  he needs a better map, I thought.  I should know better than to think, because irony loves to kick me in the pants.

Finding the bus route was easy.  Finding a place to buy our tickets proved elusive.  So as we darted around San Miniato Basso from bar to bar, chipmunk style, asking for “biglietti dell'autobus” I was reminded of Don Knotts in Aquapendente and felt irony’s first boot.  Some bars sold tickets but not to our desired destination.  Finally a patron offered to speak the directions in Italian, while I used Google translate to cipher back to English.  Great!  Two kilometers later we found ourselves in front of the train station, with no busses in sight.  It was now 11:00, 29oC, and we had walked over 7 km of city streets to try to avoid walking 5 km of asphalt and we still had no bus tickets or knee brace.  It was then I suggested we take a mulligan and catch the next train to Altopascio — we didn’t need directions to find the train station, after all.  We had to switch trains in Florence, so as I stared out the window at Tuscan scenery racing by I remembered the young pilgrim from New Zealand and felt irony’s second boot.  I’ve got to get a better map.

Altopascio had a couple of pharmacies, but knee braces were in short supply — something to do with the VF running through town.  Laurel gritted her teeth and promised to hobble on to Lucca tomorrow.  We had a supper of cold salads and soup at our Airbnb and then strolled through the three old town squares, stopping for an Aperol spritz before calling it a night.

Leaving San Miniato.

Waiting for the train to Florence after a futile hunt for bus tickets and a knee brace.

A quiet evening in Altopascio.

A cool refreshment for when its still 31oC at 7:00 pm.