Monday June 29, Rifugio Casera Tartoi to Villa Santina
Alas, all cool things must come to an end. Today we headed down into the foothill furnace.
In the morning, to give our knees a break, we followed the road from Rifugio Casera Tartoi down 2,625' to Forni di Sopra--longer but less steep than the trail-road combo we had taken up two days ago. (In retrospect, even had the weather had been better, I don't think my knees could have handled the originally planned Sunday-Monday routes. Sunday was supposed to have ended with 4,500' downhill; Monday was to have started with the same. 9'000' down in less than 24 hours would have rearranged my cartilage.)
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| Typical architecture: blocky with stone below, wood above |
As we descended into Forni di Sopra, we passed the mailbox for the refuge. I guess mail carriers aren't interested in hiking six miles up and down each day.
We saw three banners in town with gnomes on them, then passed more gnomes in a store window. We didn't see any gnomes in the wild, but they're apparently part of the local folklore.
Big wooden rooster outside the tourism office.
While we waited for a bus to take us to Villa Santina, S got a haircut to combat the heat. The stylist was German.
After a walk to scope out the early 16th-century frescoes in the Chiesetta di San Floriano down the road (alas, closed), we bought tickets to Villa Santina at a Tabaccheria near the bus stop, then drank Sprudel and Apfelschorle outside at a nearby hotel while we waited.
Buses in Italy are air conditioned.
After almost an hour ride, the bus dropped us off midday, 2,900' lower, at the desolate train station in Villa Santina. We found lunch at a somewhat less desolate paninoteca on the main road through town. It was hot. We were hot. Everyone else was hot. We and everyone around us moved slowly, so as not to heat up any more than necessary.
We had let our B&B host know we were coming by bus instead of on foot, and she graciously let us check in early. It wasn't air conditioned, but it was a cool, dark oasis, and it had a fan.
In the later afternoon, clouds moved in over the mountains that now looked so far away. We hoped the rain would make it as far as Villa Santina.
With the clouds, the temperature became more bearable. We ventured out for gelato...
...then took a 5 mile RT walk to the Basilica Paleocristiana, ruins of a 4th-7th c. CE church near the Tagliamento.
On our way, we passed what must have been a challenging field to plow, full of rocks.
The archeological site has a roof and is open 24/7.
Afterward, we found a grocery store and had dinner on the balcony of our BnB room, listening to thunder, hoping for rain.
Ta da! Over 12 miles (surprisingly, for a bus day), a couple hundred feet up, 3,000' down.
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| Tartoi to Forni di Sopra |
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| Villa Santina meanderings and Basilica Paleocristiana |
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