Wednesday, 2/26/03
Wow, what a night and what a day! This morning I woke up and felt like I was going to fall over. I was very dizzy and nauseous. ---- said I must have taken some of her hangover onto myself. When I was getting into the shower I prayed that it would be a passing thing and that I wouldn't be sick all day. In the middle of my shower I threw up. For the first time in 7 years! I felt better immediately.
A lot of people were sick. ----was puking the entire bus trip, but that's probably because she was the most drunk last night. Why did I get sick the last day at the hotel? You would think I would have gotten it when everyone else did the first week.
Today was a good day after the first 10 minutes. We checked out of the Hotel Park for good, and then took a long bus trip to Orvieto. From there we took a funicolare (a car that drives up the hill on a track) up the steep hill to the town. We saw the Duomo was nice, but the most remarkable things were Luca Signorelli frescoes, which depicted the last days, the end of the earth, heaven, and hell.
After that we were pretty much free. Valerie, Carmen and I got a cheap lunch and ate it in a little courtyard in the back side of town that overlooked the entire valley. It was sunny and gorgeous. On our way back we went into some underground caves with lots of pots in them. They weren't nearly as extensive as we expected, but it was fun. There was a nice deep well. Last we visited a bar to see the deep, dark wine cellar. It was amazing. The barrels of wine were covered with white mold.
At four we got back on the bus and came to Assisi. I love Assisi. It's only about half the size of Castiglion because there's no new part of town. In the time we had between arrival and dinner Karin, Valerie, Carmen and I went exploring. We found a forbidden path down private property, but went down to see the view. I'm not sure if the private property sign was referring to the path.
We went up the road to a castle at the top of the hill, and played around for a while outside because we couldn't get in the courtyard. But then we found a hoe in the wall, about 2 ft wide! At first we thought there was no way, but I told Valerie that if she went through, I would (I'd gone halfway through and knew it was possible, but didn't know how to pull myself out on the other side). So Valerie went first, brave soul! She had to go in on her stomach, twist once, grab onto the stones above her, and pull her legs out one by one. I went next and she was able to help me out. Then came Karin. Carmen handed our coats in then came through herself.
We played some more, tried to figure out a way to get inside the castle without success, then climbed up on the wall (the ground inside the courtyard came up almost level with the top of the wall in one place, but there was a long drop on the outside so we couldn't get out that way). We had to climb back through the hole, which was harder now because the hole was actually wider on the inside, so there was more room to move around in when coming in. Valerie used a big trash dumpster (luckily it was there) to hold herself up to get out. After she helped Carmen, they had to grab Karin and me around the waists to pull us out. When we were all out we hugged like it was the end of a beauty pageant.
Thursday, 2/27/03
I'm sitting in the window sill of our hotel room in Assisi. The sun is shining on me and it's very warm. I feel like Snow White or Cinderella. Any minute now, a bird is going to land on my hand and sing me a song. It's thirty minutes until lunch.
This morning we went to the Church of St. Francis (San Francesco). It was very colorful. There was the lower level which was the main chapel, then the upper with Giotto's frescoes, then there was a basement level with the tomb of St. Francis. When we walked in there was a group of priests [friars?] singing Gregorian chants. At first I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but it was down the stairs where the tomb was. There's a beautiful inner courtyard. The entire complex (the monastery) is gorgeous. But when I was inside Valerie told me that because Paolo was talking a monk got really mad and started yelling at him. Paolo yelled back that the monk was not a man of peace, and ended up getting escorted out of the church. Paolo shouldn't have been talking since there were Silencio signs everywhere, but we found out from him later that if you want to talk in the church, you actually have to pay. We were all pretty disappointed.
After that we went to the underground ruins under the square and temple of Minerva. The temple, of course, has been re-dedicated as a Christian church. Then I went off with Carmen and Valerie to visit Santa Chiara (St. Claire), the sister church to San Francesco, and the Duomo, San Rufino. There was a weird little man who tried to shoo us out of the prayer chapel. I guess he's the self-appointed guardian of the church.
Whew! After lunch Valerie, Carmen and I set out to find an internet point to get our Ryan Air tickets, but the only one we could actually find was closed until March. So we asked many many shopkeepers where to find an internet place and finally after two solid hours of looking, we found one. Breath. It took a long time (because the computer was so slow) and we had to cut out a lot of places we wanted to go. It would've been too confining to book up a lot of flights to different cities when we're not sure what all we want to see, not to mention expensive. So we cut out Ireland, Barcelona, and Southern France. Now we are going to travel England and Scotland, then go to Paris. From there we'll come back to Milan.
We were exhausted, but we hiked back up to the fortress to get the pictures we didn't last night. We ended up having to climb through the hole again because it was locked again by the time we got there. So we kind of reenacted our climb scene (though Karin wasn't there) and poised inside the courtyard for pictures.
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