From: Cerignola
To: Orta Nova
Miles: 13
Total: 435
We had an easy day of walking today. While just 13 miles makes it feel like a wasted day, it’s another 15 to the next town so our plan had us stopping here in the quaint little town of Orta Nova.
On yesterday’s post, Dave mentioned that our hotel last night in Cerignola was new. It was very nice except for one problem. I think we’re back in the land of rock hard mattresses and pillows. In Greece, almost all the places we stayed had mattresses that were so hard I could hardly sleep. Several times I had to get the extra blankets and bed spread and fold them into a thick pile on top of the mattress just to soften it up enough to get some sleep. Last night I had to do the same trick at this new hotel. Also, the pillows were hard too. After looking around I discovered a brand new pillow, still in its original plastic wrapper, in a closet in the room. It was labeled “soft.” It’s my lucky day I thought. But not so fast. It was hard as a rock too. So with all that, I was glad today was a short walk because I didn’t get any sleep last night.
Most of our route from Cerignola to Orta Nova was once again a busy, two lane road with no shoulder. We got on the road at 9:00 after a good breakfast. By lunchtime we were in the little town of Stornara where we took a short break. With only 1.5 hours left, we made it to Orta Nova by 1:30. We had picked out a B&B to stay in near the center of town. When we found it, the gate to the property was locked, but there was a phone number to call. Dave got Tonya on the line. Unfortunately, she said there were no rooms available tonight. We had just started to walk away, thinking about plan B, when a man drove up, spoke zero English, but was able to communicate enough to confirm we wanted rooms. He called a gentleman on his cell phone, and then told us there would be someone here to help us in about an hour. So we sat around on the sidewalk and in a bit Tonya and another lady drove up. That’s the same Tonya who told us there were no rooms available. She said she and her helper needed some time to clean the rooms. They were nice enough to make us coffee and tea with cookies while we waited. So after another hour of waiting, we got into our rooms at the B&B. They’ve got everything we need except WiFi, but we’ll suffer through by using our cellular data for the night.
Tomorrow we’re walking to the large city of Foggia. The route is relatively short and flat with many lodging and dining choices when we get there. Also, we’re looking forward to a day off coming up on Monday when it is suppose to rain. We hope everyone has a great Friday and Super Bowl weekend.
