Assisi |
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31 May 2025 - Italia
Assisi is an incredible city that I don't think I would have visited as a non-catholic without Iwona. Located on a hill it is like one giant castle with tiny streets and impressive views of the valley below. The city is famous for St. Francis and St. Claire, that is, San Francisco and Santa Clara - placenames in the Bay Area I lived in once. It seems everything is made of limestone and geared toward tourists. We saw dozens of buses dropping off people in front of the Franciscan order's headquarters monastery. And the shops mostly have the usual t-shirts and shotglasses, but also some more artisanal goods. One place was hawking a hand-painted platter with the new American pope's mug on it. Catholicism has always understood merchandising though. This morning the dogs and I ran up the 300 or so meters from the valley floor where our hotel was to castle Rocca Maggione, which once was a part of the wall of the city's defences. At 6AM it was only us and the trashmen, so the dogs enjoyed running free through the narrow streets. Many of them are stairs and so would not permit vehicular traffic anyway. The churches are interesting, but not as impressive as some of the great catherdrals I've visited in Reims, Barcelona, Milan, Dublin, Norwich, Santiago, etc. Assisi has created a pilgrimage route to compete with Santiago though, and we saw many pilgrims who'd made their way there by foot rather than train. Pilgrims are lovely, talkative people and we made friends with the woman in the room next to us at the hotel. Breakfast this morning with her felt like many in Spain on the Camino. After two days of sightseeing we are now on our way to Rimini, where our dog Eddie will get his first experience of salt water and the mild waves of the Adriatic. I am interested to see how he likes it. It will be old hat for Paula. It's been over a year since I swam in that sea's clear waters in Bosnia after my half marathon at Mostar.
