From: Florence
To: L’Isola
Miles: 16
Total: 860
Today we left the beautiful Tuscan capital city of Florence behind and are now on a four day walk to Bologna. To get there we will be walking over the Apennine Mountains that run perpendicular to out route. That means three days of climbing and a decent down the other side into Bologna.
We got off about 9:00 after spending two nights in Florence at the Hilton Garden Inn. It was a nice break, but as usual after a day off, it was hard to get the feet and legs moving again. But after about an hour of hobbling along like a couple of old men, we were back in the groove and walking our usual 20-minute miles.
Today’s route took us through several small towns west of Florence and along the Fiume Bisenzio River. Most of the towns along the river had walking/bike trails so we spent about half the day away from roads and traffic. Eventually we turned north toward the mountains and picked up our road route, SS 325, which we will be on all the way to Bologna. It had quite a bit of traffic on it today, but that will probably slack off as we get farther away from Florence. Tonight we’re staying in a very nice B&B in the tiny mountain town of L’Isola. The rooms are great and the staff was very welcoming.
Tomorrow we have a relatively short day of 14 miles, but most of the walk will be uphill. Also, we have entered our last week of walking for Part 1 of this trek across Europe. We’ll be finished with the first 1000 miles next Tuesday and fly home on Wednesday. Lucky for us the weather forecast looks pretty good for the next week so we’ll knock this next 140 miles out, head home for our mandatory 90 day exodus from Europe, and pick back up in early June where we left off.
I guess that’s all for today. Thanks for following along.
