Day 11 and 12 Assisi
Be praised, my Lord, through all Your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and You give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!
Of You, Most High, he bears the likeness.
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;
in the heavens You have made them bright, precious and beautiful
-St Francis of Assisi
When we last saw our brave, lizard-fighting couple, they were exhausted from all this churching and decided to have some lunch.
We certainly could have walked a bit (uphill), but thought we’d be
tourist and eat at the Café right in front of the church. The views were impressive.
The café was fairly busy, but they sat us
quickly. While we were having a nice
lunch, we had another Ugly American sighting!
Mr Ugly sauntered into the café and demanded a table, they
showed him to an empty table, but NO, he wanted the one in the front, by the
windows…that was not quite vacated yet, and certainly wasn’t cleared. As soon as the guests at the table left, he
parked himself right down and DEMANDED the WiFi code. The staff did get a little revenge and took
about 20 minutes to clear and reset the table, and take his order. The Blog Fodder wanted to jump up and down
and announce….”No, really, we are not all like that!”
Meanwhile another table was sat with 4 nuns on
vacation. We decided that nuns needed to
eat too. I will report, they had a very
nice, simple, quiet meal.
Of course, since we were there, I took the opportunity to
ask for the bathroom. I heard down the
stairs and to the left. What they didn’t
mention was that it was down, down, down, down, down the stairs. If this restroom was in Venice rather than
Assisi, it would have been underwater.
But, after that mission was accomplished, we were refreshed
and ready to move on!
At this point, we were as far away from our hotel as we were
going to get in that direction, so we headed back. We went into the church of Santa Maria sopra
Minerva which used to be the temple of Minerva in ancient times.
One of my missions in town was to see the Church of San
Damiano. This is the church where St
Francis received his calling, and he and his friends rebuilt. The Blog Fodder mentioned that it was down
the hill….no, really DOWN the hill. We
decided to give it a go, and turn back, if it looked like it was too far, or too
down.
First we went through Porta Nueva…the New Gate, built in
1316.
We gathered that just meant it was
newer than the other gates! We then
walked and walked and walked. We passed
an escalator at one point, but it hadn’t escalated for a long time. At one point we saw a little church. We debated if that was San Damiano or not,
but gathered it was not. It was locked
up, but had some beautiful art inside.
Eventually, we made it there and toured the lovely little
church.
We must have been exhausted, this is the only picture we took of the church!
Of course, in Assisi, what comes down, must go up. Why in the world didn’t we think to take some
bottled water with us. We did stop for
some wonderful Peach Iced Tea once we hit town.
Back in town, we went to the Roman museum, that is actually
under the Temple of Minerva. They had
some Roman artifacts and showed what the piazza looked like in Roman times. When we came back out we were able to see the
marking in the piazza that indicated where those features were.
The Piazza itself was quite the happening place, it has been
a market place since ancient times. And
it had a great fountain.
It had an interesting
sculpture in the front of a lion eating a martyr. Quite a warning!
Yum, Martyr Tartar!
Hey, Save some for me!
Inside there were very nice sculptures of St
Francis and St Clare.
When doing some
work on the church, they found some ancient Roman foundations. We went there and paid for our tickets. Since the lady didn’t have the right change,
she just charged us for the discounted rate…I suspect we were temporary Senior
Citizens that afternoon. The B.F. is
much closer to that point than I am.
The rest of the church wasn’t too interesting, but they did
have a whole hallway dedicated to Pope John Paul II. He is still very fondly thought of in Italy.
There is a pilgrim trail that goes from Assisi to Rome, that follows the path St Francis took. It takes about 2 weeks to hike, but we did see the starting points
On top of the hill nearby is an old fort., Rocca Maggiore. Since there isn't much to see there, we decided to just enjoy the view of it from town.
San Ruffino was very close to our hotel, so we ended our
touring for the day at this point. We
went back to the hotel for a refreshing shower and views of the valley.
Since we were not able to go to the recommended restaurant
the night before, we gave it another try.
They were open! The restaurant
had great vaulted ceilings and was very intimate even though the tables were
fairly close together.
The owner has a
love for Bossa Nova music. The B.F was
loving it. Later in the evening, when
the owner changed the CD, the B.F. recognized the artist and that lead to a big
old conversation about jazz music, in Italian on the owners part and in English
on the B.F.’s. One of the highlights of
the trip for B.F. He ordered a cheese
plate for an antipasti and it was a masterpiece. The food was great, the wine was great and
the music was certainly right up B.F.’s alley!
The next morning we had another lovely breakfast at our
hotel and schlepped the bags back down to the car.
The day before I saw something in a gift shop that would
make the perfect gift for a friend.
Please don’t ask me why I didn’t buy it when I saw it. But the B.F. and I went on a walking tour of
the town yet again to find this item.
We finally had success and decided to stop in a little store
to pick up drinks for the car. The young
lady in the shop was a born sales person.
I am rather surprised we didn’t leave with a used car! She gave us tastes of all the products in the
shop and really put on the pressure to buy, buy, buy! Since we were packing light, we couldn’t take
most of the products home with us…those darn liquid restrictions. So she suggested shipping items home. We picked out some jars of truffles and a
bottle of fig balsamic vinegar. She
packaged it up and charged us the high shipping cost.
The shop is right next to the beige umbrellas.
Everything made it to our home safely, but a few days after
the package was delivered we got a bill from FedEx for ONE PENNY in import
duties and TWENTY DOLLARS in FedEx fees.
Boy, that better be some mighty special balsamic vinegar.
We then headed back to the car and wandered off to our next
adventure!
Some extra views of Assis
Interesting repair work!
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