I am sitting in the airport in Rome waiting for our flight to Palermo and thought I would get caught up on the blog. The wifi at our place in Tuscany was very spotty and sometimes I had to wait 10-15 minutes to load 2 pictures at a time.

So, Assisi then. It was a bit of a drive to get there, about 1 hour 45 minutes. But well worth it in my opinion. Of course, Assisi is mostly known for being the birthplace of St. Francis. In fact, he pretty well lived and died all in this town. He was a guy brought up in a fairly well to do family who denounced all possessions and dedicated himself to God and lived in poverty all his life. This was a very radical concept at the time, drove his dad nuts. He became quite famous during his life as well, treated everyone the same whether you were a poor person, a rich person or even an animal. He founded the Franciscan order, and they spread their message to the new world as well (ie. San Francisco). Just 2 years after he died the Pope made him a saint, which was at lightning speed for the time. Of course, the church built a massive cathedral to commemorate him and to hold his tomb. That probably would have driven him around the bend if he knew that, since his life was based on simplicity. Oh well, it resulted is some amazing art and architecture!

The town itself was really cool. I keep saying these small hill towns seem very medieval but this was topped it all. It might have been due to the old castle at the very top. Fairly quiet with not too many tourists, we wandered around and saw the main sights. One of them was the church honouring St. Clare. She was also born in Assisi and had heard about what this Francis guy was doing, so she too denounced all worldly goods and lived a very cloistered life (ie. no TV, electricity ..... not even wifi!). She got word to him that she was switching sides (to the simple life that is) and she ran off from her home to join Francis (soon to be Saint). Her dad goes ballistic and tried everything possible to convince her to come back but she would have none of it.

After the long drive back home Gaye whipped up a chicken pesto pasta and we washed that down with some Chianti. Just another day inTuscany.