Assisi

9th and 10th September 2009

So we're currently sitting in the Assisi train station, waiting for a train to come and take us to Rome. Yesterday, we had our first Italian rain, which was nice, but not overly heavy.

We jumped on a bus from Siena to bring us to Assisi, and not only was it 20 minutes late, but we had to share the journey with three other Aussies: 2 older ladies and a younger woman who must've been one of their daughters. Not far into the beautiful journey through the Tuscan hills and countryside, I overheard one of the ladies commenting that the scenery was very similar to that of the Victorian countryside. "It could almost be as if we were driving from Melbourne to Shepparton".Righto, whatever. Apart from them both being fairly dry, it in no way resembled the s*** and boring drive from Melb to Shepp. You can take the Bogan out of Shepparton, but you can't take the Shepparton out of the Bogan.

Anyway, we arrived into Assisi early afternoon and with absolutely zero instructions as to how to get to our hotel, we set off on a little walk. Luckily for my photographic memory, we were able to find the place from a Google map that I'd looked up a couple of weeks ago.

Assisi is an amazing city, built into the side of a massive mountain. Most of the streets are pedestrian, and the houses line the sides of the streets. It looked fantastic driving up to it from the bottom of the hill as all the houses are made from the same creamy, pinkish coloured stone. The photos really wont do it any justice. Assisi is also the old stomping ground of Saint Francis and Saint Claire (Around the late 1100s-early 1200s), although here they're known as San Francesco and San Chiara. Once I saw the sign saying Assisi's sister cities, Bethlehem and San Francisco I knew we were going to be in for a religious couple of days.I did do some wikipediaing of these two to find out what made them so special. Briefly, Francis gave up his rich and extravagant lifestyle after a picture in a church talked to him and told him to fix up some a church which had fallen into disrepair. He then spent the rest of his life wandering the hills of Umbria (The region in which Assisi is a part of) barefoot, trying to help the needy. He is the patron Saint of Italy, as well as the environment, animals and a stack of other stuff. Claire was one of his first followers and helped spread the word. Looking her up on wiki showed that she was also the patron saint of a heap of stuff, including television. Apparently she became the Saint of TV in the 60's when someone remembered that when she was too ill or couldn't attend church the pictures on her walls would relay the messages to her.

Anyway, after we'd checked into our hotel and dropped our bags off we set off to find the stuff to see in Assisi. We heaved ourselves up some massive hills in search of some lunch. In the process we found the main city square, with the Minerva church on it, it dates back to 1BC. We also found about 5 or so other churches during the afternoon. I can't really remember the names of them all off the top of my head, but I do know that we visited the Basilica of St Clare. This was a fairly impressive church, and her remains are actually kept in a tomb below in the crypt. There were many people down there having a pray. We found a café and picked up a little tomato croissant thing and a massive can of coke. We thought we'd leave the final big church, the Basilica of St Francis until the next day. What was also really good about all the churches in Assisi is that they were all free entry. It really pisses me off when you have to pay to get into a church. What if I just wanted to go and have a little quiet time with the Big Man? Do I really have to shell out 3-5 Euros to do so? The churches were all really nicely decorated with massive colourful paintings on the wall. One of them even had a temporary exhibition of the life of Pope John Paul II.

Later in the afternoon we headed into the Roman Forum, which was set just off the main square. This was place really cool. Basically it was all the remains and ruins that they'd found of the square as it was back at around 1BC. It took us right underneath the new main square, and we saw the entire old pavement, columns, a sitting area, shops, and a big monument. I found this easier to see how it was back 2000 years ago, more so than at Bath. I still wonder how it all got covered over and built on top of over time? So far this place was one of the highlights of our Italy trip thus far.

It was late afternoon so we thought we'd make the short walk downhill to our hotel and rest for an hour or so before embarking on dinner. We'd been recommended a few places to eat, by the lovely lady who run our hotel. Sadly the place with the best, and almost cheapest menu was closed for some reason. We headed back up the hill and found another nice place, which specialised, in traditional Umbrian Cuisine. The waited who served us, could've been Chris Arnott's Italian twin, except he was about 10 years older, with a full head of grey hair. This place was quite nice, and Dan ordered a traditional pasta with cream and sausage, and I had the same traditional pasta but with mushrooms and chili. The pasta was more like a noodle that you'd put in a stir-fry, but it was bloody delicious. We said farewell to Italian Chris, and headed back down the hill to the hotel. Dan made me stop on the way at a cake shop, which had meringues in the window. We picked up some pastry filled rolls with a custard like filling, and Dan got two meringues squished together with some sort of chocolate filling. We made it back to the hotel and sugared ourselves up. Dan loved them, but I found them too crumbly and a little dry.

The next morning, we got up and found it to be just after 10. The shutters on the windows didn't allow any light into the place, and it made me think that it was around 6 or 7am. We stumbled out and grabbed some breakfast at the hotel. Nothing fancy, just a croissant, coffee and some fruit. We showered and set off for the day.

The first stop for the day was at the Big One. The Basilica of Saint Francis, or Basilica San Francesco. This place is actually so big; it has two basilicas inside it; an upper one and a lower on. We went into the lower one first, and again it was decorated in much of the same fashion as the others we'd visited. From here we were able to go down into the crypt to see the Tomb of San Francesco. Again, more people were having a pray, so we did a quick walk around and headed back up.When we arrived in Italy I had started to try and count how many Nuns and Monks I saw. The count was somewhere in the 30's before we reached Assisi, and I've now given up. Just the one visit to this lower Basilica, I reckon there was over a 100. We headed back outside and up a big set of stairs and headed into the Upper Basilica. This was much the same to the lower one, but with a few more windows, it was much brighter. We did the usual walk through then headed back outside to the nice sunlight. We sat outside the church for a while and decided on our plan of attack for the rest of the day.

We ended up walking up and down the hills and the maze of streets for a bit until we found somewhere for a nice lunch. We found a popular looking pizzeria off a side street. We ordered some pizzas, and I thought I'd play it safe after getting Mr. Ed on my plate in Siena, so I got a ham and mushroom one - my favourite. Turns out though I got the stinky, cured ham that I don't like, so that got peeled off and put onto Dan's pepperoni one. The base of mine wasn't cooked and it was all soggy - a real disappointment. Anyway after lunch we set up to conquer the top of the mountain, Dan's idea, not mine. We were already most of the way up where we ate lunch, so it was just another set of stairs and a killer 300m walk up a hill to reach the Rocca Maggiore; The big defense castle at the top overlooking Assisi. The other really cool thing about Assisi is that all the city walls are still intact and still surround the city on the hill. We paid the small price to get into the castle and ground and went exploring. The castle started about 1000 years ago, built by the church and now its passed through numerous hands, and had many extensive restoration works done to it. The Castle itself was pretty standard, but we were able to climb to the top of the tower for a nice view of the city and the surrounding mountains. We also were able to climb to the top of another tour and walk along a small section of the city walls. Going down a little bit from here we took a 150m through a tunnel going through the middle of the wall, which brought us out at another defense tour. Although the wind was nearly strong enough to blow us off, the views were magical. After this it was late afternoon and we'd seen all the sights of Assisi, so we headed back all the way down the hill to our hotel. On the way back down though we stopped at a "Self service restaurant" - basically it's a room full of vending machines, and a couple of microwaves. You pick your meal out and then heat it up. They also had a vending machine with heaps of different cans and bottles of drink in it. As we were buying a bottle of Coke, we realised the top two rows of that vending machine actually contained Rosary Beads. So as you're buying your drink you can actually buy some beads at the same time. Religion for the 21st century.

After a movie and a lay down we went up the hill and around the corner to the first place we wanted to eat at, but was closed the day before. Tonight it was open so we grabbed a table. The menu had about 20 different things that I wanted to try. Considering we both had pizza for lunch, we both chose pasta for dinner. Dan had a tagliatelle with chili and tomato and some local salami type thing in it, while I had quite possible the best pasta I've had since we've been here.I had some gnocchi, which was about the size of golf balls, stuffed with a few different types of cheeses, baked in a meat and tomato sauce. It was sensational. After dinner, Dan wanted to trek back up to the cake shop for more desserts but I couldn't be bothered. I won and we ended up just headed back to the hotel for some CNN (It's the only TV channel in English) and then some sleep.

We got up this morning to another hotel breakfast, and then we had to head down to the city walls to get the shuttle bus down to the train station. So now we're sitting on the train to Rome, which should take about 2.5 hours. For the first time in Italy we had our tickets checked by a conductor. The two kids in front of us just got thrown off the train for not having tickets. Sucks to be them!