Friday 28 September 2007

Pilgrimage from Castellafiume to Avezzano 27/09/07

Gim was picking me up at 8am so it was a struggle to drag myself out of bed at 07:30. There was definitely way too much wine drunk last night!

It was back to Franco’s bar for breakfast and I found out that he was a champion at boules. There was a boules court next door so he took me over to have some quick lessons. It was quite a fun game :)

The rain came down heavily last night but luckily it had mostly cleared up for me this morning. There was only five minutes where I had to take cover.

It was a great walk down the mountain to Cappistrello with an awesome view. I had told Steph I would meet her before lunch so there wasn’t very much time to rest. It also meant that I should take the highway as it was 7kms shorter than the smaller roads.

The only obstacle was a 1km long tunnel just before Avezzano. It had a small footpath so I figured it would be safe, but what I wasn’t counting on was it having no ventilation! About half way through I was having visions of myself dropping dead from exhaust fumes!

Steph was waiting for me when I arrived in town and I was exhausted! It was already past noon and I wanted to go and pick my computer up in Rome, so after a quick shower we went straight to the train station. Five minutes after the train left and I crashed out for the entire trip.

What a stressful day! To start we couldn’t find the computer shop again, and didn’t know what time it shut. Then they didn’t have my memory upgrade so we had to go to a different shop on the other side of town, which was going to shut in under an hour. No taxis wanted to pick us up, which I found very surprising for such a major city, so we jumped on a random bus that was heading in our direction. The Gods must have been looking out for us as this bus took us straight to the street we wanted. The only problem was that we were at the wrong end of the street and it was pissing down with rain.

About five minutes before the shop shut we staggered through the door dripping wet. All turned out well and I got everything I needed. My computer is now ready to start playing around with my video footage I have taken; I can’t wait to see what we have got!

We then had a couple of hours to fill in before our train left and I was starving! What I really needed was some McDonalds ;) I couldn’t believe Steph joined me. This is the first time in twenty-nine years I have seen such a thing. She’s a changed woman!

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