Day 5 Assisi -Home of St. Francis-

Headed out and the bus made a pit stop nearby this sunflower field outside Assisi. This turned out to be a pretty neat photo op, which was sort of something out of a Van Gogh painting or something of the like. Not sure the farmer appreciated us wading through his sunflowers, but I don’t think we caused too much damage. I was pretty careful myself to avoid damaging the stocks.

Before hitting Assisi, we hit into a typical EF tour gift shop, where in the past I had made some purchases. I figured the olive oil and stuff I got there last time, was the same stuff I saw down the Strip District at the Macaroni Company, so I passed on it this time around. Hell, I have bottles of wine from 2006 I brought back that I still have yet to open, so I was a bit more selective during this trip’s souvenir shopping sprees. Once interesting tidbit, we hit into Giuseppe, our old bus driver from the 2006 tour! At first he didn’t remember us, but after we explained about our last trip and Giota (our old tour director) he remembered. Stacie and I were floored that of the entire continent of Europe with over 800,000,000 people, what were the chances of us meeting into the guy on this tour? The probability is unfathomable, so we got our pic with him.

Arriving in Assisi, I must admit that you will not find a more impressive or commanding view over the Italian landscape. You can see for mile and miles, and I think my panoramic shot did a pretty good job at conveying this. Meer later told me that it was one of his most favorite stops in all of Italy, as the city was very clean, and authentic looking. It is kind of light on the push post card shops, being a more serious type bus stop for religious types and the homes are simply beautiful. Here are some shots from around town.

One of my favorite highlights of the town, is the 1^st century BC Roman temple to Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom and foresight, which given the view Assisi offers made perfect sense. Then later of course the Christians came along and gutted the place and now inside is a nice powder blue chapel that the Christians installed, but they left the old Roman building and facade in tact as they tended to do in most cannibalized churches. (e.g. The Pantheon in Rome)

Of course, I had to go to the bakery where Sam and I had our canollis on our last trip. So many goodtreats to eat, and so little time. Here are some bakery shots to make your mouth water.

Eventually we wandered up and down a few side streets, and saw some pretty cool Franciscan church at the Assisi Cathedral ruins & the Chiesa Nuova. One disturbing observation was the Franciscan fascination with martyrdom. Frescoes inside the church glorified the Crusades with the Muslim Turks, portraying Friars being beheaded, and disemboweled by Muslims so the bodies would sink which tended to get as over dramatic as it was self promoting of the faith. Did these Friars deserve such treatment or deaths? No, but then again the Christian Crusaders plowing their way into the Syria and Palestine were not 100% innocent in their Holy war slaughtering Arabic cities for God either. Just goes to show how little organized religion has evolved over the centuries I guess.

Anyway, we met our tour guide, who was a Friar from Eastern Pennsylvania of all places. He gave us a really interesting talk about the Church of St. Francis, and as to how and why it was built over St. Francis’ grave. It is like a 3 layered church, which in the deepest lair contains St. Francis and his founders of the Franciscan order. Other than a guy yelling “Silenzo” about a dozen time yelling at people to be quiet, or “no photo”, I can’t see how anyone couldn’t help but be inspired by the peace and serenity of this place. Meer leaned over to me at once point and said, “Don’t these guys ever shut up telling people to be quiet?” It was rather funny when a group of nuns all dropped to their feet holding up 50-75 onlookers behind them waiting to get into the vault, so that they could do a mini novena. I got yelled at by one of the Nuns to be quiet, and it wasn’t even me who was talking. (Catholic School flashbacks all over again) I mean, I realize this is your hero Sister Mary Ignorance, but jeeze, how about letting the 100 some people behind you see the place too?

Hit Sunday traffic into Rome, and wished we hadn’t. Took almost 4 hrs to get to our hotel. Samuel got lost using his Italian version of GPS, and Theo started to lose it. Theo turned to us and stated, “Either I’m going to kill myself, or I’m going to hurt that man.” The Restaurant that we ate in was God awful, and served Chef Boyardi pasta, see-through meat, and warm water to drink. I think the local Goldfish in the nearby aquarium had a higher IQ than our waitress, and we lost a night to wander about Rome as we were hoping to do.

The good news was our Hotel was tip-top. Built in a new convention center type model with all types of modern amenities. Every now and then EF will surprise us with this kind of change-up, and being only 30 minutes out of Rome was also another bonus. A group of us stayed out on the deck sipping a few glasses of wine and complaining about what could have been a better organized EF day. It wasn’t Theo’s fault, but we could see he was a bit frustrated by today’s obstacles.