So what happened in Assisi?

On our way to Assisi, we stopped at the Santa Maria degli Angeli church and saw sooo many people with dogs. Everywhere you looked there were dogs. We thought that maybe it was some kind of festival, and since St. Francis is important in Assisi, we thought maybe it had something to do with blessing animals. And we were right-it was the Saint Francis animal blessing ceremony. It was really cool, and they had a parade going through just a few minutes after we got there-talk about great timing!

So after spending a bit of time there, we got on the bus and headed towards Assisi. The bus was silent for most of the ride (about 3 hours plus stops) because most people were sleeping cause we had to wake up early. So when we finally got there we found out that there are millions of steps and everything's up hill. After walking up and down from our room for a day, we knew that that's a better way of working out than anything we've ever done before. And who knows, by the time we get back to Chicago we might be able to easily climb the stairs of the Hancock :)

So when we got there, we were assigned rooms and roommate. Since they ran out of the regular hotel rooms, they put a few of us (myself included) in a random small "hotel." The house was high up so we had to climb too many stairs and our legs were killing us every time we went between our room and the cafeteria. The place itself was... well, interesting. When we first got there the heat was off and the water was absolutely freezing. But we told someone about that and by the time we got back from dinner the heat was on the water was hot so we could shower without freezing. We also decided the house was haunted cause the lights kept turning off and there was a creepy staircase that led downstairs with caution tape at the top. No one really wanted to go down there, so it's still a mystery.
So other things that happened in Assisi-we went on a tour. Apparently there are 30 churches and 1000 people in Assisi. I posted pictures in an earlier post, so you can look at those. When you first drive into Assisi you can see a castle, but other than the hotel there didn't seem to be too much to see. But like I said, we went on a tour and that's when we discovered the rest of Assisi, which is beautiful.

On Monday we went to Gubbio and we had about 2 hours to walk around. Gubbio is in the northeastern part of Umbria. According to an article we got, it is the most beautiful medieval city in Europe. We saw a statue of St. Francis with a dog.

The last day we went on a 6 mile hike. Ari, Simone and I ended up walking further cause we got separated from the group, so the supposedly 6 mile hike ended up being more like 7 miles. It was really steep at some parts, and ok at others, but by the time we decided to turn around we were in so much pain. We started running down the hill because we realized that we only had 45 minutes to get to lunch, and the hike down was over an hour. Although we were in pain, our hunger won and we periodically started running towards our final destination, the hotel. We were only 15 minutes late for lunch and it was probably one of the more enjoyable lunches we'd had so far. All in all though, the hike was definitely worth it, despite the pain and absolute exhaustion after. The pictures we took were amazing and the views were incredible. Only thing I wish I had for this trip is an actual SLR digital camera so that I could take better pictures.

Random, fun quote of the weekend: "I wish that we could all be functional when we're born."