Friday 16 June 2006

Hello again. It's catch up time before we go to Rome tomorrow. Also this evening is a sociable type event with friends of Monica's upstairs in Vane e Lorenzo's.

My memory being what it is, I can't remeber what happened what day exactly, but we've gone to the beach two more times. I'm not burning, but I'm not changing colour either - it's a revelation in terms of freckles. Bathing is good. The sea's not exactly toasty, but certainly manageable. I swam a lot yesterday. Monica's braved it the one time, somehow opting for the day when the water was at it's coldest. People wander round Italian beaches trying to sell earings &c. to young people. They don't have much luck that I can see. There is also a coco bello! man who has an amusing horn and a loud voice with which to shout "coco bello!" Today we ran into some of Monica's friends, who were on a family outing. Nice.

It may well have been Wednesday that we went to Assisi, which looks a bit like this:


Gosh pictures are slow to upload at whatever connection speed this is. Anyway, that's Assisi as in St. Francis of so there were many churches to look at, rather fewer that I can now remember the name of. They were all good, but, unfortunately, I wasn't as much in the mood as I might have been. Hottest day so far - may have had something to do with it. I'm told Rome will be warmer. Mmm.

So, let me see if I can get this straight - firstly we went to the church where St. Francis hung out with his monk buddies when he wasn't wandering around doing cool stuff. Nice. Then to the main church, which is where he's buried. Nice. And then to S. Damiano, which is where it kicked off for Francesco; he was told to rebuild a church by a crucifix. I can't remember if was an extant crucifix or a vision. I believe St. Clare later based herself there as well. Nice.

Now, I need to get some sleep, or I shall never do anything in Rome.