Day 7: La Verna to Santo Stefano

 September 7, 2022

10 miles 

1000 feet of elevation gain

After our tough day yesterday, today felt like a walk in the park. Ten easy miles, most of it a gradual downhill with some forest and some open vistas.

We arrived in Santo Stefano and found a good-sized town, staying in Hotel Santo Stefano. It’s a modern hotel without the charm of the medieval buildings we’ve been staying in, but the bathroom is big and modern (although the shower is still tiny. All showers in Europe seem to be small.)

We walked to the city center and found people furiously working on setting up for a festival tonight. So after dinner we walked downtown. As we stood on the bank of the Tiber River (very small here near its origin), talking in English with some other pilgrims, a local woman overheard us and started talking to us in English. She got her MA in England and worked as a translator, so we lucked out and were able to get the history behind the festival. On September 8th, in the 1500s, there was some kind of miracle that saved the town from flooding. The date is celebrated now with a religious procession and two different areas of town competing against each other. There are two bridges near each other, Ponte Vecchio and Ponte Nuovo. Each town section selects a theme and decorates a bridge and some streets in the town. One theme this year was the Simpsons and the other was music. Each town section also built a bonfire to burn after the procession went by. It was quite a party. Tomorrow night the town sections will face off in a rugby game, but we will be long gone by then.

Tomorrow morning we’re taking a bus to the next stage and walking from there. We have to skip one stage in order to arrive in Assisi in time for the next part of our adventure. Sadly, we will be leaving some of our pilgrim friends, but hoping to meet some new people in the next town.