As much as I fell asleep reading about Saint Francis of Assisi and his neverending pontification about God, I have to admit I really loved his hometown. Assisi is this beautiful place located in Umbria, perched on top of a mountain (or it felt like that, anyway) with a consistent gorgeous view and cute little winding streets. The view was almost overwhelming – everytime you looked around, you’d see the huge green mountains or catch a glimpse of the towns below. It didn’t hurt that it was a sunny day, perfect for exploring.

Getting up was a bit rough, as we had to be on the bus by seven in the morning, but I think most of us just passed out on the way there. It’s a few hours from Prato to Assisi, so we got there at around 9:30 and were greeted by a cold foggy morning. Luckily, our first stop was inside the Basilica of Santa Maria.

This was a huge church – just the angel on the top was the height of three or four people. I thought the coolest thing about it was the fact that it housed another, smaller church inside of it. This church belonged to Saint Francis, and it was tiny compared to Santa Maria, but richly decorated with art. We also saw the chapel where he died. It’s amazing the amount of work they put into preserving all of these things.

After that, we headed up to the medieval part of town, where we saw the Basilica of Saint Francis.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but it was very impressive. Frescoes everywhere, some of them better kept than others, but all of them beautiful. We also got to see the tomb of Saint Francis. I felt a little sacrilegious because I kept on looking at it and wondering what would happen if the lid suddenly lifted.

We had a break for lunch, and after some delicious pasta (I swear pasta and pizza are going to be forever ruined for me at home) some of us hiked up to a castle sitting on top of the town. The view was spectacular – so worth the climb.

The second half of our day was mostly concerned with Saint Clare, who was the first woman to follow Saint Francis. We saw her church and place where she lived, which just happened to be on the bottom of a giant hill. We were so glad to see our bus when we had to trek back up.

Overall, it was a really busy day, but I liked Assisi a lot. I thought it was beautiful. I also finally figured out why my camera was taking really low resolution pictures – I had somehow managed to put it onto some kind of web format mode, where it was lowering the resolution of everything. I’m pretty sad that a good third of my pictures aren’t that nice for printing, but at least I fixed it! I was so happy to sleep in this morning though, and I’m looking forward to a nice lazy day of running errands and doing homework.