Our Trip to Italy, March 25 - April 3, 2008
We were
very lucky to travel to Italy with a great group of people from Logos
Ministries, made up of travelers from the Catholic Churches in our area (plus
two Lutheran Ladies). We departed Phoenix at 6am March 25th, after
arriving at the airport at 4am. Given the time changes and a three hour layover
in Newark, NJ; we arrived in Rome at 6:30am local time on March 26 and
immediately boarded a bus bound for Assisi.
Our friend Alex Cudzewicz, a seasoned traveler and a member of the St. Patrick's Choir where I sing as well, along with his wife Rosemary documented the trip in a travel journal which he emailed to a select number of people. Select the link on the side to see these journals. They are well worth viewing.
Martha, John and I are compiling our photos and videos of the trip and will have them here shortly.
We arrived in Italy and immediately departed for Assisi. That city was as far from a metropolitan looking, urban city, like we are used to here in the United States. The road there was a modern freeway, then onto a highway, but, once off the road a real treasure was waiting for us.
The city, sitting on a hill (it seemed like going anywhere in Assisi involved climbing a hill) is the birthplace of St. Francis. We toured the Churches there including the Basilica, which was the first of many churches where we said "WOW".
Martha,
John, Walter and two of our new friends took a trip to a St. Domiano, working monastery, in
the rain (it wasn't raining all that bad when we got off the bus). It was a
beautiful experience, we came upon them just as evening prayers were going on
and although it was all in Italian and we didn't understand a whole lot of the
words, the universal language of the Church made it seem like we were really a
part of the prayers. On the way back we even found two escalators in this old
city that helped us ascend the steep hill that we had come down.
The next day in Assisi was filled with churches and other beautiful sights. The landscape is very green there, and our perch on top of the hill provided panoramic views to see the Italian countryside.
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My Latin from high school definitely got a workout looking at all of the monuments and buildings. PAX is Peace.
Check out the rest of the photos on Martha's Flikr Site, and the descriptions in Alex's Travel Log.