Day 1 – Walking out of the big city to the beautiful countryside

32k/19.8 miles

426m/1397ft ascending

299m/980ft descending

It was a long first day which actually covered the first 2 stages of the guide book. Since supposedly the first 2 stages are easy it was maybe the only opportunity to pick up some extra time in this journey. Plus we reached the end of stage 1 at 10 am in the morning! For the most part it was true except for the final 3k into the hilltop town of Monterotondo – that’s when nothing but very steep climbs started and of course just when your really tired ! At one point we literally sat down off the side off the road on a huge hill where an Italian man rolled down his window and I think at first asked us if everything was ok and then proceeded to tell us to go sit somewhere else lol !

But overall it was a really good first day leaving the busyness of Rome and it’s suburbs to the beautiful countryside on a picture perfect sunny 70+ degree day – which might be the only day of full sunshine ahead ! Definitely some wet weather in the upcoming forecast

Already a few things that make these pilgrimages set apart from any other trips I’ve done. Camino moments I call them :):

1) Yesterday when we arrived at Rome the hotel owner, Flavio sent me a message with metro stop directions and to let him know when we’re on our way. Once we got off the final stop and walking to the hotel we were looking around for exact spot and I hear someone call my name – Flavio was outside on the corner awaiting our arrival to show us the way:)

2) We ran across some peace demonstrators today and they struck up a nice conversation with us and welcomed us to join them we said thank you very much but we had a long day ahead lol

Several villages were participating so we kept running into the peace demonstrators along the way

3) We walked by an outdoor church service outside one of the community members saw us taking a look and came over welcoming us to participate with them for free he said lol