Thursday, May 14, 2009

A Centenary Remembered



What luck - a row of 5 seats and just the 2 of us, so we managed a reasonable night’s sleep on the way to Rome. On arrival, we caught a train to Roma Termini, then another on to Assisi, reaching there mid morning and found a nice little hotel within 10 minutes of our arrival, so had most of the day ahead of us.
What a wonderful place! The old town up on the hilltop has picturesque, cobble stoned streets and old, old buildings. It deserves its UNESCO heritage listing!
We visited the famous landmarks: - Basilica of St Francis including his tomb, Basilica of St Clare which included displays of robes belonging to both of them, the Duomo of St Rufino, who is the patron saint of Assisi (surprisingly not Francis) and the Piazza del Comune with its Roman Forum and Temple of Minerva. The Duomo was right near our hotel.

The best parts of Assisi were the streets and streetscapes - especially after the day tourists returned to Rome and Florence and the magical lights illuminated all the old buildings. The trattoria where we had dinner wasn’t too bad either.
We could stay for a week but off to Siena on Wednesday morn
My dad (Gail’s) was called Frank to everyone but according to his birth certificate, he was Francis Assisi so this visit had special meaning. He would have been 100 this year.


2 comments:

Amanda said...

Sounds lovely.

Miss Di said...

I've just been reading about Francis of Assisi. Sounds like he was a bit of a wild lad in his extreme youth. But I do love his prayer.