From: Capranica
To: Viterbo
Miles: 16
Total: 711
Today’s walk was a tough one for several reasons that I’ll explain below.
We got on the road today at 8:45. Rather than our normal Italian breakfast at the hotel, we were given a voucher to go to a local coffee shop just down the street. This was not the first time we’ve faced this arrangement. Unfortunately, the voucher was only good for one drink and one pastry. That’s not a lot of breakfast to start the day on, but nevertheless, we enjoyed what we got. ie, you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.
After the not so beefy breakfast, our next challenge was the weather; specifically, the wind. Though the sun was shining, and the high for today was suppose to be in the upper 40’s, the winds were forecast 15-25 from the north. In our case, that’s right in our face. I think the forecast was a little off on the winds. At times, we had to come to a complete stop to catch our balance. When we were protected by trees, it wasn’t so bad. But when there was a clearing, or we topped a hill, the wind was very strong.
We finally made it into our destination city of Viterbo around 2:30. We had intentionally picked out a Best Western hotel on the far side of town because it took a mile off tomorrow’s walking distance. To get there, we walked straight through the center of town and kept going another mile to our hotel. For the first time on this walk, when we walked up and asked for rooms, the attendant said they were full for the night. Not what we wanted to hear because we had just walked past some hotels a mile back in the city center. So back out into the wind we went, backtracking into town to find another place to stay. Luckily, we had a tailwind going back so it wasn’t so bad, and the first hotel we came to had rooms and they’re nice.
One note of interest about Viterbo; it’s center is surrounded by medieval walls built in the 11th and 12th centuries which are still intact.
Tomorrow is forecast to once again be a windy day as we make our way to the lakeside town of Bolsena, 18 miles away. Thanks for reading today and we hope everyone’s Saturday was a good one.
