From the Etruscan Necropolis to Ice Cream Mountain

About 5 km after our early start today we came to the mod­ern town of Sutri which sits on a hill (sur­prise, sur­prise) above the ancient town of Sutri, now an archae­o­log­i­cal park. We walked right along caves and grot­toes carved into the rock, some­times kit­ted out with niches or benches: a bur­ial site of the Etr­uscans, the tribe that pre­dated the Romans in this area.

A lit­tle far­ther along into our day’s trek mainly through farms and along high­ways over low hills, we met up with another pilgrim—it seems to be this last week on the way to Rome that we’re finally meet­ing up with oth­ers on the road. He’s a Ger­man doc­tor whose father was a Lutheran pas­tor (and best friends with the local Catholic priest—happy ecu­meni­cal news for us!). He joined us the rest of the day and we enjoyed his com­pany greatly. Once we passed 4 Dutch pil­grims stop­ping for a lunch break; I wouldn’t be sur­prised if we see them again too before it’s all over too.

The day was very windy and cold but bright and sunny, and though we got barked at by a lot of dogs as usual none of them was off the leash, which was a relief. I slid on loose gravel once and fell pretty hard. I’m look­ing for­ward to the col­or­ful col­lec­tion of bruises that should emerge on my leg tomor­row but grate­ful that this prob­a­bly counts as the worst injury of the whole trip. The win­ner of the strangest sight of the day prize was “Monte Gelato Ranch,” with both Amer­i­can and Ital­ian flags fly­ing from the wooden gate and the skull of a Texas long­horn mounted over the entrance.

Our des­ti­na­tion was, gasp, a hill­top town! Cam­pag­nano di Roma winds along a ridge, dis­tin­guished by a bell-shaped bell­tower and another bell-shaped statue in the town square and one curi­ously Persian-looking build­ing with arched win­dows and flo­ral tiles on the out­side walls. We also peeped into the store of an Ital­ian arti­san named Mas­tro Momo paint­ing tiles by hand; some­how both the worker and the art seemed more authen­tic in what is obvi­ously not a tourist town. A lit­tle beyond that we bid our Ger­man com­pan­ion good­bye and marched on one last kilo­me­ter to (we hope) our last night in the camper. Two days till Rome!

Anne-Sylvie says:
October 27, 2010 at 9:42 pm

Good luck till Rome!
I think of you every­day!
I wish I’d be walk­ing with you for the last days as I was on the first ones!
Que Dieu vous bénisse,
Anne-Sylvie
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