“I’m not a mind reader, but I’m reading the signs” - Miley Cyrus
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I am writing from Pavia, where I am after a 150km leap across the rice fields to the ciy yesterday.
What happened?
Well, I didn’t wake up with the plan to take a bus and a car to past all the good mosquito-y countryside, but in the morning I saw a few new signs.
The first was, after sleeping on a very parochial pilgrim bunk bed, I felt very stiff, as I did before seeing the ortheo. Then I saw a message from the amazing harpist from Ireland who is walking to Rome from her home in Clonakilty. She was leaving Pavia today..
“Pavia, Pavia..”
Someone along the way had told me about Pavia and how it was the best hospital in Italy but I didn’t remember who.
Was it the pilgrim yesterday who had insisted if I still had pain the best idea was to see a real doctor instead of an ortheo at the spa?
I remembered very clearly his Italian sign language, two fingers tracing a square in the air to represent a diploma on the wall.
No, it was a separate conversation a day earlier. The waiter at the hotel in St. Vincent had told me that Pavia was the best hospital in Italy because it’s where his daughter studying to be a doctor hoped to do her residency.
I took these three pieces of information and the discomfort I was experiencing I was not too proud to take a bus.
I arrived in Pavia and was seen quickly. The hospital really was first class. The X-rays concluded nothing was broken, and it was just a matter space between my discs I never felt before because I never walked 1,000km.
I felt really relieved to have an expert opinion and continued with confidence.
That evening, as I walked through the city with mosquitos biting around every corner, I realized the value of also skipping a week of hardship through the hot rice fields.
I had a really wonderful dinner with three other people I had met along the way; one an Italian nutritionist who studied in Pavia too and helped me order in Italian a very healthy and wholesome meal of salmon and fresh salad.
She had already done the Camino de Santiago twice, as had one of the others. Their stories really inspired me about this special way in Spain.
And todo was tranquilo .
