Back to Italy

 

We’ve always had great experiences on trips with Kevin Saunders from Logos Ministries and Bible Study classmates.  We expect this trip to be even better as we are joined by my brother Conrad and his wife Cathy. We also figured out that more than half of the rest of our fellow travelers are friends and/or people that have traveled with us on other trips.  Feels like a reunion party.

 

We got up in the middle of the night (literally) to get to the airport by 4:00 AM to catch a 6:00 AM Continental flight to Newark.  We had a four hour layover there, before our 5:30 PM, 7 hour flight to Rome.  Here is a picture of Walt and Martha Moneypenny in the foreground on the left. They are our friends from St. Patrick’s (Yes that is their real last name.)  Sitting across from them is John, Walt’s brother, who is they youngest pastor in Orange County.  He drove in from California to meet up with us for the trip.

 

 

Our good friends Jim Birk and Kay Gunter are still smiling at the Newark airport:

 

 

As are Mike and JoAnn McVeigh

 

 

As they have not yet completed the seven hour (at times bumpy) flight across the Atlantic Ocean.  But we arrived safe, even if we didn’t get as much sleep has we had planned!

 

Of course we were greeted at the Leonardo Da Vinci airport in Rome by a foreign language (Italian) and the wonderful attempts to translate it into English:

 

 

Lost your oversized bag?  This sign tells your where to find it:

 

 

Then there is this one.  You know what they were trying to say, but you also know that English is the translator’s second language:

 

 

We took a bus from the Rome airport to Assisi – the home town of St. Francis – and the city of our first overnight stay.  Assisi is in the middle of Italy, one of the 20 sections (equivalent to U.S. states) of the country, but the only one that does not have a sea coast. We made a pit stop along the way at a gas station with the name “Agip”.  I don’t know how that is pronounced in Italian, but I’m sure that not many English speaking people would think that a name sounding like “a gyp” was good  PR for a gas station.

 

 

If you look closely you can see that gas was selling for 1.35 Euros per liter.  Converting Euros to Dollars, and liters to gallons, you find out that they are paying $8.19 per gallon.  And you thought gas prices were high in the U.S. !

 

They have had unusually cold weather in this part of Italy in the last few weeks, and it was a surprise to see snow on the mountains (to us and them).  But there it was.

 

 

We asked our in country guide, Luisa from Crossing Borders Travel Agency, about the odd looking trees along the way:

 

 

And:

 

 

She said that they were “Umbrella Pines.”  The Romans used to plant them along the many roads they built, every mile or so, to provide shade to travelers.  They still dot the Italian landscape today.  She warned us that in Italy, bankers really do keep “banker’s hours” opening from 8:30 AM to 1:30 PM as a rule, so we should plan our money exchanges accordingly.  We saw lots of olive tree groves on the way, and besides ceramics, olive oil is the main product of the Umbrian section of the country.

 

About 5 kilometers outside of Assisi we first visited the Basilica of St. Mary of the Holy Angels. It houses the Portiuncola (Italian for “little portion”), a small church given to St. Francis by the Benedictines. “The basilica was constructed between 1569 and 1679 enclosing the 9th century little church, the Portiuncola, the most sacred place for the Franciscans. It was here that the young Francis of Assisi understood his vocation and renounced the world in order to live in poverty among the poor and thus started the Franciscan movement.” (Wikipedia)

 

 

To get an idea of the size of this Basilica, here is a picture of Dani (Kevin’s daughter) Kevin, Kay and Jim on its front steps:

 

 

Here is that same picture from afar:

 

 

 

Here is a view of the nave of the Basilica where you can see the much smaller Church inside:

 

 

 

The Basilica is also home to a number of restored frescoes painted by Ubrian artists in the 17^th century:

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a view of the Church (in the middle of the picture at the top) from the town of Assisi which is up on a hill:

 

 

 Of course, outside the Church we spotted a true Italian landmark:

 

As we walked around we also saw a number of very old residences with that distinctive Italian look:

 

 

In another suburb of Assisi we visited a ceramics factory:

 

 

We stayed at the Hotel Giotto, named after the famous painter of the frescoes in the upper Church of the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.

 

 

This hotel is built on a foundation of a 17^th century residence.  Its “recent” incarnation as a hotel was in the late 1890’s.  It had great views of the valley below the city.  Here is Rose on the balcony with my sister-in-law Cathy and my brother Conrad:

 

 

Another panoramic view:

 

 

Assisi is a hill top town with wonderful brickwork and narrow winding streets:

 

 

There is an irony to the town famous for the saint who lived in poverty and administered to the poor.  According to our guide it is almost impossible to buy any real estate in the city.  Only the elite and rich can afford to live within the old city walls.  Most of the property has been passed down from generation to generation (like Chicago Bears tickets).  But more about Assisi later. . . . . .