San Quirico d'Arbia to Sevella June 8

                                                                        Current Day.                           Trip to Date

Distance walked- miles.                                      12.1                                         336.7

Feet climbed- feet.                                             1450.                                       27,313

Song of the day:  Crystal Blue Persuassion by Tommy James and Shondells

Look over yonde

What do you see?

The sun is a-risin'

Most definitely

A new day is comin'

People are changin'

Ain't it beautiful

Crystal blue persuasion

By the way, for any of you Walter White fans, the scene from the breaking bad series where they used Crystal Blue Persuassion as the background music was one of the best of the entire show.  Truly a work of art.  

This is going to be a fairly short report today.  We had a straight forward walk through the beautiful Tuscan hills.  Got lost several times, but of course, ultimately figured it out.  We had very little shade during our walk and it was very warm, in the high 80's.  Fortunately there was a light breeze most of the day, which helped to keep things manageable.  There were a couple of very challenging climbs as well.  One note:  I saw a red fox on the trail, but by the time I got my iPad out of my pocket to take a photo, he had escaped into the field.  A beautiful animal, the first time I have ever seen one in the wild.

We crossed several steams and rivers today:

I recently read a review of a book about world war II propaganda documentaries that the USA war department made for the American people. They recruited several famous Hollywood directors, including  John Ford to make these films.  Because these directors would sometimes get to the battle scene after it was over, they would often attempt to re-create the war scenes for dramatic purposes.  Apparently many men were injured and some even lost their lives in these "re-creation" efforts.  Well, Linda and I ran into a bit of that today when we were attempting to dramatize walking across these "raging streams"!  In one case, Linda ended up stepping into the water on a "re-take" of a scene.  No lives were lost though, although I'm quite confident Linda was ready to kill me by this time.

A little after 1:00 we arrived at our destination for the day, Agriturismo Sevella.  This is a resort like facility out in the country, about 3 miles before Radicofani.  The proprietor of the the place is Marina, who has a Ruasian mom and an Italian father.  Marina moved to Italy from Russia when she was 15 years old and then later married a local Italian guy. Just a delightful woman.  When we arrived, we told her we were hungry.  She said they don't normally serve lunch but she would fix something for us.  We had a terrific lunch with meats, vegetables, and breads, along with an excellent local white wine.  Here is a photo of Linda and Marina.  Note that Marina put on a sort of uniform costume when when serving the food.  She did not have this on when she checked us in, and took it off when lunch was over:

The hotel is a series of rebuilt farmhouses.  Here is a shot inside our bedroom:

We spent the afternoon, sitting around the pool, looking out at the beautiful countryside and reading books.  A very relaxing afternoon for sure.  Tomorrow is going to be one of the hardest days of this trip, about 20 miles with a very step climb into Radicofani, followed by a very long and difficult descent.  We appreciated this nice pause today.  Tonight, we are having a 5 course meal at the hotel to celebrate the half way point of our trip. Suffering pilgrims we are not....!