And on the seventh day, he traveled by bus and train.

On Saturday, Karen and Tim were headed to Florence and points beyond, including Cinque Terre. For me, it’s time to transition to the solo leg of the journey, on which I was planned to walk a section of the Via Francigena, a medieval pilgrimage route going all the way from Canterbury to Rome. In planning this vacation, I was, let us say, ambitious, assuming that the first week would build me toward longer days of walking. This week includes three days of 17 miles or more. That sounded reasonable, somehow, last December when plans were being hatched. However, now, in the bright light of day (and a very bright light it is) and given temperatures projected to hit the mid-80s, I am embracing a new philosophy of mixing walking days if I can imagine it with rides provided by the luggage hauling service. This is one secret advantage of the holiday scheduled with a light daypack and a luggage transfer included: if things go wrong, you can usually ride with the second bag.

But first, since this was a separate leg of travel with no luggage transfer included, I had to get myself, my backpack and my wheeled bag from Siena to my starting point, the town of San Quirico d’Orcia. I had worked out that this could be done with a train ride and a transfer to a bus. Timing worked to my advantage, and I shared a cab with Karen and Tim to the train station, where we said our goodbyes and they caught a train about an hour before mine.

I boarded the one-car train to Buonconvento, where, if reality matched the Google directions, I’d catch a bus right near the train station to take me to San Quirico d’Orcia. Riding with me were a British family who were catching some other bus (they talked about how long it would take to get from Buonconvento to the coast…) and three Italian teenage boys with daypacks. It turns out certain things are universal, including that age when teenage boys believe Axe body spray or some equivalent is to be applied lavishly.

The ride was uneventful, and we all got off at Buonconvento. The family went to their waiting special bus (there seemed to have been others gathering for it before our train came in), and I wandered across the street to scope out the bus stop, which turned out to have no shade.

I had about an hour to kill, so I settled on the little cafe serving lunch but also ice cream and cold drinks across from the train station and mere steps from the bus stop. The boys followed the same basic pattern, except that they looked at the menu, concluded that even a soda for two Euros was too lavish, and went to find shade elsewhere. I bought an orange soda and made… it…. last.

When it was about ten minutes before the bus, I ambled over, and the boys soon followed. The bus came right on time, and I rode happily through the countryside for maybe thirty minutes before arriving in San Quirico d’Orcia. I grabbed all my stuff and departed the bus. In about ten seconds, I had one of those head-slapping moments. I reached into the outside pocket of my pack to get my cap, which I had put there for the bus ride. No cap. Had I put it in the zip pocket? No. Shit. The bus was long gone now, and my cap, essential in this sun, was now on its way to points unknown. The three boys were probably having a good laugh if they found it.

So, in the very small town of San Quirico d’Orcia, I suddenly had two crucial objectives. Find my B&B and find a store selling any kind of caps.

And here my second misstep of the day. The macsadventure.com app on my phone has been very good so far, including giving you map directions from your present location to your accommodation (a nice feature for when you’ve just arrived in a strange town). So I followed the directions, not even looking at the street address. It took me all the way across town, down a set of stairs in the hillside (remember, I am hauling my wheeled bag and wearing a backpack, not super heavy but sweat-inducing), and down to… a place where the road had been built up above the hill on arches hovering above me, looking rather like an aqueduct. Unless I was staying in a broken down garage on the smaller road I was standing on, I was lost. So I looked at the address, looked at the town map, and worked out that I had literally walked past my B&B following the map directions to those damn stairs and down the hill. So, back up the hill, where I paused for a water break and to catch my breath. By an amazing coincidence, as I was sitting across the street from my B&B in a little plaza, a man came up and rang the buzzer. Getting no response, he called someone on his cell. A few minutes later, a man came down the street. Figuring that this must be the guy running this B&B, which I knew takes up only one floor of a three story building, I stepped across the street as they started chatting. Lo and behold (a phrase one doesn’t get the chance to use often enough), the man who had rung the bell was delivering my welcome pack with all sorts of goodies, like daily step-by-step directions (the set for this leg hadn’t been uploaded to the app yet, though all of last week’s had been, who knows why) and the yellow cards I am supposed to give each host from the subcontractor handling logistics for this leg of the trip. I explained that that folder he was folding was for me. After a second of puzzlement, they both got it, and I was taken up to settle into my room, which was very nice and featured a bathroom nicer than any I have seen so far on this trip.

I rested up for a while, because I had seen that all the shops in town were closed for the mid-afternoon pause. There was one place I had my eye on, which seemed to be selling hiking and outdoor gear.

At 4pm, when the shops reopened, I went out to explore and get a hat. It turns out San Quirico d’Orcia is having an outdoor art exhibit, with cool statues peppered around town.

Look how dazed I am by being hatless. Or maybe I was dazed by the odd combination of bronze block-as-top-half-of-head and the strategic buffing of the bronze, which suggest that this giant fellow should have been disappointed with bronze- he deserves a gold medal.

The shop with the outdoors gear had a pretty slim supply of hats, and the best I could do is a vaguely military cap that makes me look like I am trying to join the revolution.

I celebrated the new purchase with two scoops of gelatto, pistachio and a vanilla lightly flavored with raspberry.

Later, I headed out for my first solo dinner of the trip, at a lovely place called Trattoria Osenna. Though the place was empty when I got there at 7, they said they just barely had a table for me.

After they seated me, people started streaming in and going past me at my beautiful back patio seating to a further back section. Dozens of them. It became clear that the reason the staff was feeling the pinch to get me in was that a party of about forty locals were celebrating something. I watched as waiters streamed by with uniform plates of food. The party must have pre-ordered something, and it all looked great. I had a very delicious roasted cheese with truffles (bubbling hot) and spaghetti with porcini mushrooms, and an incredible Montepulciano red wine. A good end to an odd day.