You start from the dune, as in a park route, but this time the thread leads to the table. The coastal strip is wide, the Circeo stands ahead, and for a stretch you walk only between sand and low scrub. It is a deliberately slow beginning: you take in the territory before the lake and before lunch. The dune is not a shortcut. It is the way to reach the water already inside the landscape, with salt on your skin and the mountain still whole in your gaze.

From the ribbon of sand you go down to Lake Paola. The water is still, the reed bed closes off the edges, and the mountain is mirrored in it when there is no wind. You follow the bank without hurrying: this is the stop where you look, before sitting down. The lakefront is close, the boats are still, but it is not the table yet. Here the route stays with the territory, between the reflection of the Circeo and the low sound of the rushes.

The Osteria del Lago stands on Sabaudia’s lakefront, a few steps from the shore just walked along. It is a local presence: the merchant pays to be in this thread and sets the rule himself. At table, if you spend at least thirty euros, five come back, and the code is shown at the counter. Eurolandia does not take payment for the meal. The stop is this pause, with the lake alongside and the tower coming afterwards, when you get up again.

After the meal you set off again towards Torre Paola, and this stretch is done by car. The tower stands on the channel, where the lake flows out to the sea, and it comes as a change of scene: from the tablecloth you move to masonry and to water that finally moves. It is not a summit. It is the point where lunch hooks back onto the park, and the Circeo, which at the table was a backdrop, becomes again a mass of rock a couple of steps from the car window.

It closes on the dune where it began. The light is different, the Circeo is behind you, and the lake stays to one side, with the osteria already used up in the middle of the afternoon. You cross the sand again on foot, without adding stops. This was the thread: dune, still water, table, tower, and then the coastal strip again. The same territory of Sabaudia, read once by those who walk and once by those who sit down.