Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Umbrian adventures

We spent the last three days in Tuscany ( Siena and Arezzo) and Umbria ( Assisi). I'll let someone else tell of our Tuscan adventures and focus on those we had in Umbria. Our second morning of travel, we woke up early and left our hotel in Arezzo around 9 a.m., headed for Asisi. After several hours on the bus, we arived in Asisi, where we visited the church of St. Francis and then went on a walking tour of the city. We ended up in front of the church of St. Claire, where we were released for a lunch and a free afternoon.
After a quickish lunch, we set off with a few of the students to visit to the castle above Asisi. On the way there, we ran into two student returning from the castle who informed us that there were secret passages in the castle! Running to the castle, we stopped for only a few minutes to apreciate the view before hurrying on.

After we got tickets (stopped by the man at the ticket booth who apparently didn't recognize us as people who can go anywhere without paying when Denis and I ran past him), we finally got to the castle and began looking for the secret passages. We found several that led only to walls, as well as a spiral staircase that led to the top of a tower from which the view was breathtaking.
As we were leaving, Denis found a hole in the wall that led to another spiral staircase, this one taking us to the top of the wall and a passage that we all hurried down. It went on for farther than we could see. When we finally came out, we were on top of a tower conected to the castle by a wall. We were all blown away by the view and almost by the wind as well. We clung to the rail and stared at Umbria, sprawled below us.
When it was time to go back to our meeting place from which we would be taken to the bus and Rome, we left reluctantly. Little else happened aside from me and Denis getting lost, in a sense (we knew where we were, it was just our parents who didn't). I can't help wondering how unadventurous our Umbrian adventures would have been if we hadn't stumbled upon that passage in the wall.

**Sophie

3 comments:

GD said...

I am enjoying visiting Italy with you -- great blog!

Anonymous said...

This comment didn't sound like, but it was great anyway. Great pictures and commentary. Not to much excitment here. Had ASTT board meeting. Got a great new marketing consultant. Had 2 days of Koppers meeting & dinner with siblings. Came to the Lake for R&R after such a busy week. If I told you before forgive the repeat, but CJ's brother Jim died. Pray for him & his family. Love Papa/dad

Anonymous said...

Great material [and pictures] for a gothic novel!