Two Of My Favorite Trips Yet

24Feb2005 – Thursday

I got up around 7:45 when Daniel woke me up. Id taken a shower the night before so I wasn’t worried about that, all I had to do was get dressed. Being brave I walked to the window and opened the shutters to find that it was a fairly nice day out. That meant field trip was on. So I got dressed quickly and then we all walked to the buses and Daniel and I ended up sitting in the very front seat because we were so late getting there. So we settled in, both put on our mp3 players and drifted off.

Well I woke up not too long after because my stomach started hurting. At first I just thought it was my stomach grumbling grumpily because I hadn’t fed it that morning, but I soon realized that the sun was directly on the both of us through the enormous front window of the bus and I was getting baked. Very un-cool. I tend to have really weird problems with heat sickness in automobiles if I get overheated. Something to do with motion and too much heat makes me sick like crazy and I was having trouble. So for the next hour and a half I struggled not to vomit and tried to remain as comfortable as possible until we arrived in Assisi. When we got to the parking lot I was the first one leaping off the bus and gasping for the very cool refreshing air outside. I found a bench and sat there for a while just soaking up the cold weather and thanking my lucky starts that it was.

Soon the group straggled together and started its hike up the hill, around to the right, then a u-turn to the left then straight on to the large square directly in front of us and through two large gates. As we were walking I don’t know if it was my sickness or what, and how I get very irritable when my stomach doesn’t feel good, but I noticed quite vividly how loud our group was. I was ashamed to be anywhere near them, I wanted to blend into the walls and disappear and not have the locals who stared at us with looks of confusion, annoyance, bewilder, and disappointment, associate myself with them. I couldn’t believe it really, I mean the center had lectured us a thousand times about being quiet and respectful in all of the small local towns we were going to be visiting, but here we were sounding like Barnum and Bailey’s parading through their streets. Anyway, we arrived at our destination, which was a very large church and the group crowded around Marco (Assisi is his home town) for the historic lecture, and I wandered off to keep away from them and take some pictures.

Soon I was irritated yet again by the lack of respect people in our group had for each other as well. There were at least 10 times I was lining up a shot and just about to take my picture when someone from our group would waltz 20 feet in front of me with no regard whatsoever to what I was trying to do and snap a few pictures. I’m sorry, but I at least have the courtesy to look around and make sure no one else is lining up a shot before I start to try and get mine, and if they are I wait for them to finish before I jump in the middle of it. So I ended up taking all the pictures I wanted finally and finding a place against the wall about 10 feet away from the group to crouch down and listen while not being directly mixed with these barbarians. I was hoping my stomach would feel better soon, and surely that would alleviate some of my irritability.

Well soon after I crouched down, this enormous white dog with spots came bounding through our entire group tongue wagging to the ground and heading straight for me and my face. He knocked me over and I couldn’t help but laughing and watching him dodging in and out of the group racing around us like buster and every other dog I’ve ever seen does when they get finished taking a bath. I tried to snap a few pictures of him, but he wouldn’t stand still for 5 seconds for me to do so, and ended up prancing through the gates and off somewhere down the street. Well I have to admit, I was cheered up at this point and wasn’t even thinking about my stomach anymore. I guess there’s something about being tackled by a large friendly dog that just makes me feel better, lol. Anyway soon after this I heard the rest of Marco's speech about how this was the Church of St. Francis who started the Franciscan Monk order, how famous it was, and how people everywhere, including the Pope make pilgrimages to pray at the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi.

Anyhow, we started our way in and were informed of the progression we should take through the tomb first, then the lower church, then the upper church, and that there were no photographs of any kind allowed inside… bummer… upon entering this church I soon realized it was one of my favorites. The ceiling in the lower church was arched and vaulted the same way that all the other ones wed seen had been, but the ceiling was so much lower it made you feel like you were actually in a real place, and was very comfortable and somehow warm and familiar. It was richly painted, but not frescoed like crazy and I could still see a lot of the main structural elements very clearly as well as the building materials, etc. this was a medieval church and it very much reflected the medieval town of Assisi and I loved being there. So I headed for the stairs down into the tomb and was dieing from not being able to take pictures. However even if I'd tried everything was so dark I knew that none of them would come out anyway. But the tomb was beautiful. Everything was so archaic feeling, the stones were so old, but so well kept, and the altar with the tomb was surrounded in an ancient iron cage to protect it from thieves and grave robbers and the like. The lights were amazing, hanging from the low ceiling so low even I could smack my face on them, and there was recessed lighting under the ceiling that appeared quite original which amazed me and cast a beautiful glow on the ceiling. It was an amazing experience. As I made my way through the aisle and around to the right of the altar which you could fully circle, I found a small alcove on the right, as well as the other two sides, and went into the alcove and sat down to admire things. Even though I’m not catholic I soon found myself taking advantage of the situation and praying at this extremely famous and holy site. Afterwards, I reemerged from the tomb and finished seeing the lower church and then made my way up to the outer courtyard and gift shop to look around then up to the upper church which was far less impressive to me. It was high ceiling vaulted and very similar to most of the churches we’d seen and there were far less people in it paying their respects and praying, etc. So I made my way through it and found myself in another courtyard amongst some large statues of elephants (I don’t know why but the last couple of years I have become quite enamored with elephants, and I don’t think it has anything to do with my school.) so I took some pictures as well as found a few photo-ops with my roommates etc.

Soon we were all there and we started hiking to the next site which was another famous church up the hill from this one and was the church that Marco had actually grown up in. It had some very interesting and beautiful statues as well as some fond memories and stories from Marco and was a very beautiful church although had obviously been completely overhauled recently which Marco ended up telling us later on.

Next we went to lunch and it was delicious, then a lot of us wandered around afterwards in our free time just looking in shops and getting coffees, gelato, pastries, and the like. I ended up getting a scarf (my first ever) and a patch. A few hours later after much laughter and wandering we met up with the group and headed to the buses to head down the mountain to one last church and then home. On the way out of the city Marcus, ever the fun loving guy, found a park right outside of town and we took some photos of him playing on the kiddy-toys.

We got on the bus and again I was in the front seat, but the sun was lowering on the opposite side of the mountain so it was no big deal. We went down the mountain and got off across the street from the church of Santa Chiara of Los Angelos or something like that. I loved the outside, minus the huge gaudy gold statue of Santa Chiara atop the peak. But the inside left much to my desires. It had also been renovated heavily quite recently and was painted completely white inside and to me looked more like the inside of a southern plantation house then a church. The only saving grace for me here was the 8 “chapels,” which is what we call the little niches off of the side aisles - although they aren’t chapels in the sense we use it today, that were very lavishly decorated with baroque art and sculpture that was quite beautiful. Again I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the church for the 3rd time that day, so my documentation of Assisi through photography was somewhat dwindled to say the least.

After leaving that church quite soon (we were running a bit late) we got back on the buses and made the trek home which I didn’t sit in the front for and did sleep quite soundly for while listening to my headphones. When we got back to Castiglion Fiorentino we hurried to the center and had a nice dinner followed by me getting online for a few hours and talking about apartment stuff with Josh and JereBeth and then going to sleep quite late.

_______________________________________________

25Feb005 – Friday

I was in no hurry at all to get up as I had nothing to do Friday and had all the time in the world to do it in. I ended up emerging from my sheets around 11:30 and then from the shower soon after. I went downstairs and got online for a bit but found no one on and very little to do and then went to lunch soon after. After lunch I arranged to go to the Co-Op with Jon and took a short nap while I waited for him to get showered and ready and we embarked on our journey down the hill. Along the way I wanted to stop at the military outlet and get a very small backpack or something of the like to take with us on the day trips because the only backpack I have is rather enormous, and also to start sewing all of my patches onto. I plan to keep the backpack or bag or whatever it ends up being as a memento of this entire adventure and was anxious to get one. Well it was during the siesta hours here so the military outlet wasn’t open (2nd time I hadn’t been able to go there) and we went on to the Co-Op. We did some shopping, I got body wash and orange juice, and food because between meals here which is 7 hours and after them when we stay up late pretty much everyone tends to get hungry and a bit cranky, so I needed some snacks. In the end I only spent 20 euro and 5 of it ended up being on gum that I couldn’t find a price for but I got 2 packages of it with 2 boxes each so I suppose it wasn’t too bad. I got a bag of 10 biscuits for a euro nickel! I was proud of that, lol! Anyway we went back up the hill and then I chatted a little on the computer and we bummed around before dinner. We went and ate dinner and I ended up sitting at a table that I had the most fun at since I’ve been here. We were laughing so hard the entire meal everyone probably thought they’d spiked our food with something, lol! It was a lot of fun. Afterwards we watched Big with a bunch of people in the student lounge and then tried to figure out for about an hour how to hook my laptop up to the TV so we could all watch a movie off of it, but to no avail. Soon after I got online to talk to Josh and JereBeth more about apartments and whatnot and ended up going to bed a little late considering I was going on a daytrip Saturday with a small group.

_______________________________________________

26Feb2005 – Saturday

I woke up to my alarm at 7:30 and found Daniel getting out of the shower, I asked if he was finished and he said yeah but that he was supposed to get Wes up to get him in, I was confused and we asked each other what was going on and soon realized that we were all going on the same day trip and hadn’t known it, lol! So Wes let me jump in real quick for about 10 minutes before he did and then we all got dressed and being the primpers that the 3 of us are ended up having to run half of the way down the mountain to the train station so that we didn’t miss the train. We literally got on it right before it left. And I had to talk to the conductor about not having been able to validate my ticket, etc. Everything was fine though and I wandered through about 10 cars before I finally found our group and then settled in for the ride. About an hour and a half later we ended up in Florence where we found the next train and got on it for about another hour and half before we finally arrived in the one and only, Pisa! We were all famished at this point some the top of our list of things to do was to eat. We wandered down the main corso till we found a restaurant that was pretty cheap and settled in for our meal, all 9 of us. After lunch we felt much better and started our excursion across the city to the famous church. We finally got there soon after and it was amazing. No matter how many times you see the leaning tower in books or whatever, nothing compares to actually being there. So we did the tourist thing and took a dozen pictures of us “lifting” or “pushing” over the tower. And then met the most Americans we had in Italy yet and had them take out picture with it, and we took theirs, etc, etc. We were there fro a few hours and met two fairly large groups of American students, one from Dallas and the other from the Northeast area and also viewed the church, bell tower, and baptistery… all from the exterior. We discovered that it cost 15 euro to go up the tower with was outrageous considering it was 6 at the Vatican and 8 at the Duomo, the church was closed on weekends, and the baptistery cost some amount that I never found out, but that no one wanted to pay. So we then investigated the numerous shops down the street adjacent to the church and I ended up getting a few patches that I needed as well as one for Pisa and then a few other souvenirs, oh and one free dirty postcard which I gave to one of the other guys, lol! After all was said and done I ended up with 6 souvenirs for 20 euro and I think that beat the 15 euro to walk up the tower. Not to mention the 50 pictures I took of the tower, lol. After that we went to this famous Gellateria and then back to the train station to get on the train. 3 hours later we ended up back in Castiglion and me and Daniel decided to try the Military outlet once more since we were already down in the area. This time, to my extreme pleasure it was open, and we went in to look around. This place was high class, and very different from good ‘ol Colonel Bubbie’s, but was still very cool. We ended up looking around for about an hour before I finally ended up with a pair of vintage leather military gloves for 2 euro (Whoop!) and a vintage military messenger bag for 16. So we were hurriedly leaving because dinner was in 15 minutes and discovered it was raining out. Well Daniel apologized and said he was starved and couldn’t miss a moment of dinner and literally started running up the mountain. I laughed and walked quickly whilest getting soaked by the rain which soon turned to very light snow. By the time I got to the center I was 5 minutes later for dinner (big deal) and was nice and wet (well my jacket anyway). So I found a seat across from Daniel actually and settled in for dinner. It was fried chicken and French fries, and I wasn’t thrilled. At least the spaghetti was good as the first course. I didn’t end up eating very much, because I don’t even like fried chicken in the stated, but here all chicken is a pain in the butt because they have extremely weird cuts of meat and they end up being mostly bone. Anyway, after dinner I got online shortly and then found a girl with some sewing supplies and then Jon and I settled down in the student lounge and sewed on some of our patched while we watched Super Troopers. I ended up getting two on during the movie, lol, and he did too. Then afterwards I transferred some movies to his mp3 player for him and then went to the computer lab where I transferred about 1000 of his songs on to my computer from his mp3 player and talked to Josh and JereBeth yet again about apartments, which I now have and JereBeth still doesn’t. My parents signed a lease with Josh yesterday at a place they all liked, so I was informed on all those details and now I have a place to live next year which is good. I ended up going to bed around 2ish.

_______________________________________________

27Feb2005 – Sunday

I woke up quite aggravated at 9 to the freaking bells. I slept in 15 minutes increments until 10 because of the bells. At 10 my roommates and I decided to wander down and grab breakfast which was supposed to end at 10:30 on Sundays, but found that it had ended at 10 instead so I got some leftover pieces of ham and cheese, folded them over and grumpily climbed back upstairs to my room. When I got there I decided to eat some of the stuff id gotten at the Co-Op, because, that’s what it was for after all, then at that point it was about 10:30 so I found my earplugs from the plane, put them in and then climbed back into bed. I woke up at about 1:30 and found my roommates asleep and was amazed at how well the earplugs had worked, I literally heard nothing and they’d stayed in the entire time I was sleeping - a first for me and earplugs. I proceeded to take a very nice very long very hot shower, yum, and then got dressed and came down here to get online in the lab. After checking my mail and finding the pictures that my dad had sent me of the apartments from yesterday I decided to update my blog and it is now 4:30, and I am starving. I’m probably going to go snack some now and then do some odds and ends I need to take care of before and after dinner and then talk to JereBeth some before going to sleep. Ciao!