Card 22

Escaping after San Leo

We were planning to stay in the untouristy area southwest of Parma. The roads were not cooperative, we ended up later and later, finally finding signs for a hotel Papillon in a little town of San Polo. Marian had a gray headache, anything was adequate. Well, it was too icky to warrant any photos. The town center had three gelatterias (ice cream parlors), but in a walk around 10 pm which I took, I just could not screw up the courage to enter any of them. No dinner that night for us. Lunch had been salty, we drank lots of water.

The scenes were pretty, this was deserted farming territory. Very picturesque and windy. If we had a place to stay it might have been very pleasant wandering on dirt roads. very low traffic. We came to the conclusion that it was seasonal tourism, that everything was shut down until summer (or winter).

The next day we pressed on, trying again to find a base in which a hotel could be found. We thought "anything" would be better than the "modern" (1950's) Papillon. Curiously, the Papillon was staffed entirely by very large people. Did they call it Papillon, or take it over? At any rate, after some 6 hours of driving we came top a hotel! Well ... this time I was the one with the headache. The world was turning gray for me, and I thought the room in the auberge looked "better than the Papillon". In the morning it didn't look so. It did have a bathroom, but no door. The walls above the 6 ft level were black with mold, outside the windows were barking pugs and crying babies. The town, Castello, was the first we had encountered full of suspicious people. We for once felt that we were not invited there. The butcher looked at us suspiciously. The veggie vender looked at us suspiciously. The passers-by looked at us with suspicion. That night, as I popped drugs, we agreed that we would not settle here, although this 6 hours of driving a day was not what we had signed up for.