Another magnificent place to stop and wander! And that's just what we did. With only a day what do you do?

Well, after fixing up our train tickets for Rome we headed over the road to the Santa Maria church for a look, and were again amazed at this incredible monument to the Church of God and to Mary the mother of Our Lord.

This church is an active worshipping church open for public inspections every day.

Inside showed the rich history of this church, with crypts and statues dedicated to many of the Santa who served or worshipped here.

The artwork was magnificent! Huge paintings and frescos depicting many biblical scenes and many of the former bishops of this place. We spent a couple of hours just wandering and looking and were inspired again at the stories we saw in the paintings, frescos and statues. They really do teach us a lot about the Almighty!

We then headed of to the Doumo, the centre if the old walled city. Here we discovered the cathedral, an enormous structure right in the middle of the town and surrounded by many magnificent buildings and cobbled roads.

We simply wandered and looked until lunch time, and afterwards took a horse and buggy rude through the old town with what the guide told us was the English version, but we didn't understand too much, except that most of the buildings he pointed out were now museums, galleries or other tourist attractions.

After this tour we set out on foot to retrace the journey and stopped to look at all the spots of interest we had noted, and yes we got thoroughly lost, several times, even though we had a map. It seems that most streets have one name on one side and turn around to the other side and there is a completely different name there for the street! Talk about confusing!!!

The federal Piazza, I think that was the name of the place was filled with giant statues and a very big fountain. This was a great place to wander, in fact Jean got to be the photographer for many tourist wanting either the whole family or the couples picture, I did tell her she should have charged for every picture!

After a shower back at the Hotel Faenza we headed 200 meters down the road for an authentic Italian meal. Very nice indeed and a great end to our day!

this has been one of our best days, the simple act of wandering and looking and discovering was such a blast. We only wish we had more time here; in fact we had arranged at first to spend at least two days here, but with the train strike in Milan we were delayed.

Today 14th, we headed to the railway and took the fast train to Rome, arriving about midday.