Assissi, Italy

We woke up at 7 am, although Glen could easily have slept another hour or two, and moved on to Assisi. Before leaving the Hotel Mirafonti, though, we experienced our first Italian breakfast--cappuccino and pastry at the bar on the other side of the reception room. The pastry Glen had was delicious, with a lemon creme filling. We settled up with the hotel--our dinner the previous night cost 70,000 lira, breakfast was included with the room. All said, it was roughly $100, room and two meals.

We had no trouble finding the way to Assisi. The Italian roads are actually very well marked, but whereas Americans read a map by saying "go north on IH-35," that's not how the Italian signs are written or used. To get somewhere in Italy, you select the city that you want to get to and follow the signs pointing that way. If the city is small, you need to get to a larger city nearby by following the directions to it, then finding the signs to the smaller city. And, it is true, all roads do lead to Rome, and Rome is a destination on most signs.

We parked at the base of Assisi in a field next to a monastery. We could have driven further, but this was free parking whereas the "bus lot" full of tour buses was pay. We walked up the hill into the city proper, passing by the pay lot, and began our tour with the Cathedral of St. Francis. The cathedral (Basilica) of St. Francis was impressive, especially since it was built much earlier than other cathedrals we have seen in the past. (When in Britain, we visited St. Peter's Church and the Cathedral at Bath, which was amazing, but they're modern architecture compared to this church.) The Cathedral of St. Francis was started about 1228 and finished in the 1250s. Its walls were covered with frescos and paintings, particularly of the life of St. Francis and other religious figures. There were also artifacts (the robe of St. Francis, the hair shirt of St. Francis, a note written by St. Francis), cloisters, etc. Jill found it all very interesting, although more than a bit ironic given that St. Francis taught people to give up worldly possessions and live simply. Glen noticed that there was hardly a spot inside the church left unpainted; if it was, it looked like it may have been painted at a point in the past, as if a fresco had fallen off. The detail of these frescos was incredible. Although we had seen art of this type before, mainly in London museums, seeing them in their native place, surrounded by all of the rest, brings a different attitude to one's viewing.

Jill bought a guidebook to help explain the church frescos as well as to understand the significance of the different relics and buildings. The guildbook that we had that led us to Assisi was 40 Daytrips, which described the walking tour of the town and had a sentence or two on each site--but not enough for voracious info junkies like us. Jill says we would pack lighter if we didn't carry a library around with us. In addition to the 40 Daytrips book, we have a Dorling Kindersley book for Florence and Tuscany, and Jill brought a book on Tuscany as well.

The town was beautiful, with narrow stone streets, many churches and cathedrals and piazzas. From St. Francis' we went to the archaelogical museum, actually a "dig" in progress under the streets of Assisi. They had excavated an underground tunnel in one section of the town down to the Roman ruins, on top of which the city was built. Here we saw the Assisi of old, including the stones of a Roman Forum and streets--the present city of Assisi having been built over the older Roman site. They looked like Pompeii, or pieces of Pompeii, but fragmented since there was no volcano to preserve them.

We visited the Art Museum of Assisi, full of frescos and paintings discovered nearby. While we were there, a group of schoolchildren were there with their teacher, each presenting a paper on one of the pieces of art. Glen envied them their opportunity to study such great work in the flush of youth.

A word about both of these museums--upon paying the entrance fee (4,000 lira), we were asked our native language, then presented with a "guide sheet" written in it, covering the items in the museums. We, of course, thought this an incredible idea.

Speaking of incredible ideas, Glen had one while in the Church of St. Francis. Even though there were 'SILENZIO' signs all around, the tour groups tended to be quite loud, including the tour guides. What someone needs to invent is a one-ear hearing aid and a microphone that could handle sub-vocalizations to help control this type of noise without losing the guide-group interaction.

We were getting hungry, but we thought we would get one more sight under our belts, thus we climbed the hill to Rocco Maggiore, an old castle fortress connected to the city. Where Pompeii was the wonder of the Roman and pre-Roman architecture, this was an amazing example of medieval building--balastrades with dark passages, towers with slits for arrows to be shot through them, a sloping entrance upon which hot oil could be poured down. We climbed to the top of a tower via a spiral staircase made of rocks, looking into the rooms as we passed them, wondering at how life was lived in a castle such as this. We walked down and through the wall to another tower with stairs and a staircase that had no openings until you reached the top. This was really great since it was just like a movie or fantasy novel, including towers, spiral stone stairs, slots for firing arrows, ramparts, big wooden doors, etc. You could run around and climb over all of it, and we (and two other Americans we came across, soldiers on leave from Bosnia), climbed up the second tower at the end of the rampart with no light. Climbing spiral stairs in absolute darkness was a eerie, but fun experience. We sat at the top of the tower, admired the view, and chatted with the two Americans for a while, before feeling our way down.

We went back into town and had lunch at a Snack Bar and toured around a bit more (our legs were getting really tired from all the steep hills and stairs), then hopped in the car. We first drove to Gubbio, another hill town, of which there are many in Umbria, thinking that it would be easier to find accomodations in town in a smaller city. The problem was there as well: no parking and expensive hotels for the type of room. Our second option was to start driving to Florence and look for a place. We decided to try for an agriturismo, because it would be neat to meet Italians and stay in a home/on a farm. We had seen signs for agriturismo places on the way to Gubbio, and it was still early (4-5 pm). The first place that had a sign was an Equiturismo, which Jill met with anticipation. But after driving 6 km we came upon the sign again and a small house with no horses and no sign that it was open. Since we were unsure of where we were on the map, we retraced our route and returned to heading towards Firenze. The next agroturismo sign had a tennis symbol, which started Glen's comments about it being a perfect spot. As we drove and drove and drove, we thought that the problem with Italian signs is they don't have any distances posted on them. Ultimately we found the agriturismo, named Il Tomitino, after going from pavement to dirt road to smaller dirt road. As we pulled up to a large house, a man and a dog came around the barn to greet us.

The tennis court had yet to be completed, and he had to turn on the hot water and the heating system to our room. It seems we were the first guests that he had this season. He quoted us a price of 70,000 lira, which was reasonable, certainly since we didn't want to get back in the car by this time. Just as we were about to ask him about the closest ristorante for dinner, he invited us to share dinner with his family.

The house that they lived in was approximately 400 years old. His in-laws lived in the newer part of the house, and he, his wife, and two boys (Tomaso and Niccolo) had the older section. The family was originally from Milan, but the "man" (we somehow missed his and his wife's names the entire time) was born in Belgium and now worked/lived in Italy as both a teacher and a tour guide, plus part-time farmer.

For dinner we had pasta carbonara (egg and ham in cream), a vegetable (cabbage or greens), two kinds of cheese, a mixed salad and dolce (a custard with a chocolate sauce), plus wine from Sardinia. We ate and tried to hold a conversation which included everyone, but we spoke little Italian, his wife and children little English. He was forced to translate throughout the entire meal. It was wonderful and we chatted about tourists and travelers and Italy (he said American tourists always complain about having to walk). We were a bit self-conscious about how we ate and being American. But we enjoyed it and it was another interesting evening in Italy.

The room never really warmed up, so we threw another blanket on the bed and snuggled.