TAKING A BREATHER IN TUSCANY

Assisi & Siena


Italy is pretty awesome. I haven't done as much art as I would have liked but we are so busy all day every day it’s pretty understandable. I'm having a blast in these smaller towns to the point where I'm almost dreading Florence. It'll work out though.

How is everything at home? Is Grammy keeping up to pace? Meggie? I really don't have anything to say. We have been having a lot of fun. It’s weird to think that we only have a week left. We tried to send a box to Jen’s house...mostly full of crap that I overstuffed my suitcase with and never used. It cost 45 Euros and we're both almost positive that it won't make it there. The post office was definitely another interesting little experience. Well, tomorrow is Pisa-Lucca, for a night, then toward Cinque Terre. Welp, I best be heading out.
D

ARE THERE RULES TO THIS TRAIN SYSTEM?

Grammy's note: This travel story may cause dizziness!

Rome, Foligno, & Assisi
Wow such huge turn of events I don't even know where to begin.

Let’s talk tourists
Yesterday was a big tourist day. We have definitely triumphed over Rome. We've made an appearance now at the Vatican, St. Peters, the Scavi tour under St. Peters, the colosseum, Trevi Fountain, as well as the Spanish steps. The pantheon and the basilica with Caravaggio's work will have to wait until our trip back through. The Scavi tour trumps all so far. While I did sneak some pretty rad pics of the Sistine Chapel, I mean...woops! And yes, Larry, Bernini's sculptures were amazing. He literally transformed stone into flesh. It was hard to contain my hand from touching it to make sure it wasn't, in fact, soft.

The new F-Bomb
So after the most amazingly productive morning we headed toward the train station to head to Assisi. I'm super excited to get there to go find Grandma's bush because we found the perfect little tiny crucifixes to stick into the ground. Jump onto the train at the Roma Termini then switch trains in Foligno and end up at the bus station. No Problem! Como se dici Bullshit en Italiano? First, we played the waiting game at the termini due to conflicting messages. We have already been told not to sit, which is the last thing we want to hear after a full morning of touring. Relieved, we finally jump the train and head toward Foligno. Once there we look at the schedule and see that Binario (platform) 4 is where we need to be to switch trains, given we have a matter of minutes to do this. Once we get over to platform 4 by going down stairs underground and back up the stairs to the correct platform, we see that they changed it! Shit, racing back the other way just in time to see our train whistling past us. Fine, we'll catch the next one. Thinking we'll outsmart it, we wait at the new platform. Getting nervous close to when its coming, I leave sister J with the bags and go back underground and over to platform 1 to ask the deli guy. He says that platform one is where the train is leaving from. Once again, SHIT! I race down the stairs in hysterics to see the most hysterical sight of sister J, who saw a train going to platform 4 (our original thought), underground also with not just her backpack and roller suitcase but my messenger bag and roller suitcase also! She's frantically trying to waddle toward platform 4 and I'm frantically trying to tell her platform 1 and we get upstairs again to see the tail of the train leave without us. SERIOUSLY! You have got to be kidding! This time we truly think we'll outsmart the system and we break down and ask 2 different people. They both say platform 5. Alright. There we are. Sitting. Waiting. And trying not to screw up yet again. Mind you, at this point we had trouble contacting our hostel and are not even sure if we have a place to stay when we get there and it is nearing 8 pm. So the sign confirmed our destination on platform five. We thought we were good. Absolutely not. 5 minutes before our train was supposed to leave again the sign changes and its leaving from platform 5. We do the underground waddle as fast as possible yet again. And YES we finally made it on the frickin' train. Wow that was quite the fiasco. The F-bomb did not even have enough emphasis at that point and we dubbed Foligno the illogical POS station as our new cuss word.

Assisi
So far Assisi has been awesome. I think that our hostel person summed it up when we decided not to go to Cortona, 'Cortona is definitely a nice hilltop town also, but Assisi has heart'. You can definitely see the heart that Assisi has here. Despite the nonstop rain, we have not stopped walking the town as its friendly streets are always looking for company. I took Jen to the bush which we buried our little crosses which were 'semi' blessed by the pope. Was it the right bush?...Well it's the thought that counts.

D.