Kevin Selby: Assisi

So I had big dreams of going to Assisi. My mom once went and told me it was beautiful. I was excited to go and very excited to see the tomb of St. Francis which is I believe the most famous part of the city. So we hopped on the train. I was sure to wake up on time for this one, and off I went to Assisi with my good friends Darcy and Kathleen. Darcy and Kathleen had never taken an Italian train before and therefore didn't validate their ticket. When the operator walked around, he hit them with a moderate €20 fine each. That seems like it's expensive to us but to be honest it's normally €50 each so they were very lucky. We hopped on a bus up to the city because the train station was no where near the center of town. Once we got up to town we realized it was amazingly beautiful. It was built on a big hill/ small mountain and the roads were curved with beautiful buildings working their way up.

St. Francis Basilica was huge. I had always heard that Santa Croce was larger but it was hard to believe standing next to this massive structure:

Kathleen and I:

St. Francis Basilica is really two Basilicas, an upper one and a lower one. This was the ceiling if the lower one when I first walked into it:

Some of the wall paintings:

The Basilica was not well lit but it was packed with so many different people. I felt like there were so many pilgrims:

So beautiful:

We went down to view the tomb of San Francesco (St. Francis in Italian for those that don't know):

After viewing the tomb we all stayed for mass which was very nice although I didn't understand really any of the homily because it was in Italian so I kind of just stared off into space. Even though it was 10 minutes shorter than usual I felt that it took forever. Then Darcy and I got a picture in the piazza in front of the upper Basilica of St. Francis:

The upper Basilixa was very different from the lower one. It was much brighter and very colorful. It detailed the life of St. Francis:

This was the view of Assisi coming out of the upper basilica:

Some if the flowers were growing in pots on the wall all over the city and it was very beautiful:

This was a very cool depiction of the birth of Christ that was on sale outside in Assisi and way out of my budget:

We were walking around looking for a place to eat and we stopped at this sandwich shop a and the owner had all these pictures and stuff of Rick Steve's (a guy who writes guides for various places in Europe and is famous in the world of travel). Apparently Rick Steve's had come through here and picked this sandwich shop as the best place to get lunch in Assisi. Even though that was written, very few people were in the shop. A lady asked us what we want on our sandwich and then she made it for us. I told her to give me the best and she gave me something with truffles, pork, cheese, balsamic and olive oil all on this bread. The cheese was a little too strong for me but in general it was very good:

We went by St. Clare's and sat in the piazza out front to eat it. In order to save money, I packed a little picnic for us to take with us. It had wine, peanuts, pretzels, croissants, crackers, cups, and water. It was good. This was our view while eating:

The girls drank a little bit too much wine and needed a little break after lunch to nap:

Santa Clara Basilica was very beautiful, it had a nice old-timey look to it (kind of like every other church in Europe):

Of course it had the body of St. Clare for pilgrims like me:

It also had a lot of her relics:

I wasn't to take pictures inside but I took a quick snap of the basilica anyway:

Kathleen and I took a nice little break by the fountain:

Darcy and I outside if the temple of Minerva, which was actually an old Roman temple that got turned into a church. From the outside it catches your eyes easily:

On the inside the old temple blows your mind. It was stunning and packed with so much gold. It was easily one of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen:

After we decided to walk up to the top of the hill/ mountain, the views only got more beautiful as we went:

The view below of part of Assisi. While walking up the bugs were attacking us left and right. The walk was hard and long, but we were young and strong, so we conquered it fearlessly:

Finally at the top, the view on the other side if the mountain of Assisi:

I decided to strike the David pose right here because I felt it was needed:

On top of the mountain was a huge stronghold that we walked to and just savired the view of Assisi from it:

The whole thing was right there, it was great:

As we proceeded to walk down to make sure we could catch our train, we saw this building with a table on the top. You might have trouble viewing it, so be sure to zoom in on the white table on top of the building: