Monday morning, our first official day on the trail, broke cloudy and cool, with a little fog thrown in for good measure. Perfect shorts and windbreakers weather for us cool weather Bay Area people who have grown used to fog and overcast skies and warm days reaching all the way up the mid-70’s.

We left San Miniato at 8:30am, equipped with salami and bread sandwiches, chocolate Kind bars, and four bottle of water between the two of us. The Tuscan landscape rose and fell at increasingly challenging intervals, the downhills getting shorter and shorter while the uphills grew taller and taller.

The trees also thinned out until we were walking on exposed dirt roads, each one sunnier and warmer than the last, until we were walking in direct sunshine, in about 84 degrees of heat.

We made it close to twelve miles, but then Sandy starting feeling dizzy and nauseous and we wisely called it a day and called the bed and breakfast where we were staying the night and asked for a ride.

Which the owner of the B&B, a young Italian man in his mid-30s, graciously provided, driving out to pick us up himself and ferry us back to his place for a nice cold shower, a short walk into the center of town, and a cold beer and salty snacks.

On the short drive into Gambassi Terme, the B&B owner told us that most restaurants in town were closed on Mondays, but his mother would be cooking dinner that night and we could enjoy her food sitting out on the lawn overlooking the countrside.

“Three courses, plus wine, 25 euros apiece,” he said.

Dinner consisted of lasagna, followed by sliced pork and green beans, and finished with tiramisu. A bottle of red wine — Syrah– was included, and when he brought out the wine he pointed down the hill at a yellow building beside a vineyard and said, “The wine comes from there.”

We ate dinner with a woman named Suzanne, who we met walking that day, and who also overheated on the trail and rode into town with us in the B&B owner’s car. After dinner, we went straight to bed and slept for a good nine hours.