The St. Francis of Assisi story – Part II

A beautiful morning greeted us again so we took breakfast on the terrace once more. I couldn't resist taking a photo on Kerry's tablet and posting it on her Facebook account. Some my readers may have already seen it.

We were in no rush so Kerry rested a bit more and I went exploring. I've spoken about the trout I saw a few days ago so I thought I might venture further upstream to see what was there. I found a hydro station which is used when the creek becomes a raging torrent during the melt. Like a small version of the West Kiewa, Emily. But unlike the West Kiewa which rages above the hydro plant all year round this creek was still small. Nevertheless, I rock-hopped up the creek looking for pools that might hold trout. I found a couple of small pools with some similarly sized trout in them. No surprises there. It was fun to do for an hour or so. The dodgy knees performed OK during this precarious exercise.

I wandered back to the house, collected Kerry, and set off for Cortona to the south of Arezzo. This is the town where some of the filming for the chick-flick “Under the Tuscan Sun” was done. It sits high in a hill-top looking down on the expansive flat valley floor below.

The huge lake Lago Trasimeno which sits smack-bang in the middle of the Italian peninsula can be seen from the high vantage point of Cortona. Neat rows of olive trees grow on the mountain-sides to the west and north. As well as being known for the movie, Cortona is also well known for its steep streets, and that they are! We parked the car and trudged up to the Piazza della Republic pretty much in the centre of town. As to be expected there are numerous restaurants for tourists to rest their weary legs. It seemed to me that the majority of the other stores traded in jewelery and art. Well, in the middle bit at least. We chose not to climb to the top of the town. Lunch was very nice Spaghetti Carbonara. They do it much better in Italy, we need to learn in Oz.

Next stop was Assisi, passing past Perugia, the capital of Umbria. Well, the Italian sign-post system and GPS-girl conspired against us and we wound up in Perugia. A quick re-alignment of GPS-girl's allegiances and we were back on the road to Assisi which we could actually see from Perugia. For those heathens amongst you Assisi is the birth-place of St. Francis of Assisi – doh! Frankie was called by God is 1205 to “rebuild my Church which has fallen into disrepair”. Frank, not so quick on the uptake, thought he meant the little chapel down the street which was looking a bit worse for wear. So he fixed it up. Eventually, it dawned upon him that the big man meant the Church (with a capital “C”) not the one down the street (which was looking very nice now, thanks very much).

I'm sure to the surprise of none of my readers Assisi sits on top of a hill. But, the people who run the Assisi pilgrim outfit have got it all sorted. Three parts of the way up the very large hill is an underground, multi-level car-park with boom-gates and tickets and all – just like at your local shopping centre. Elevators take you up to Level 0 where there is a small shopping mall – so you can get your purchases of St. Francis souvenirs out of the way early if you wish. Another elevator takes you up to the outside. Nice, elevated walk-ways take you across the chasm (courtesy of the Rinaldi family of Monaco in 2008) to three sets of escalators. From the top of the third escalator you're on your own but the centre town is a not very strenuous short walk away – what a great start! The only downer was the Abba music being played along the journey.

We first visited the small church of St. Francis (as opposed to the massive one down-town). It was very nice.

We visited a chapel inside which house the crucifix of St. Damiano. Best was the church of Santa Chiara. A huge building of pink stone. I'm not sure where the stone comes from but many of the buildings in town are build using it. Inside the church we saw the crypt which housed many genuine artifacts of St. Francis and Santa Chiara. Santa Chiara, incidentally, is St. Clare in English. She founded the Poor Clares order. St. Clare had a working relationship with St. Francis, even tending to his wounds when he received the Stigmata. The artifacts include the clothes worn by both, Some of St. Clare's hair, cut by Frank (I can't remember why) and many other significant pieces. St. Clare's body lies behind glass and iron at the back of the crypt.

We went shopping for some souvenirs then took the long walk down to St. Francis' church at the western extremity of the town. It's a huge monument, as one might expect The walls are lined with frescos and other art from the Renaissance. BTW, the thought occured to me in the church that we may not have visited many of the “prestigious” galleries on this trip but we have seen our fair share of art and sculpture in the dozens of churches and chapels we have visited.

We grabbed a gelati to help us on the long walk back up the hill to the town square, passing a couple of Franciscan monks on their mobiles (on Facebook, no doubt) and a nun looking at a “I Love Italia” tee-shirt (for the Mother Superior back at the convent, I suppose). A few spots of raIn began to fall but we made it back to the car without getting wet. We paid our six euros for parking and scooted off in the direction of Caprese – but not the way we had come. GPS-girls got this one totally right. My advice, skip Cortona, spend more time at Assisi.

Burning up the autostarda as dusk was coming down I got to fulfill one of my goals for this trip – playing Italian 70's prog rock band PFM's “Alto Loma Nine to Five” while doing just that, burning up the autostrada. OK, it wasn't quite as dark as it has been in my imagination, and the car was a Fiat Punto not a Renault 17, and the music wasn't pumping out of the car speakers, rather it was squeezing out of my tiny phone speaker and by “burning” I men doing the speed limit of 110kph, some times even up to almost 120kph. Quite frankly, the autostrada surface is so bad one can hardly drive safely at 110kph, let alone 150kph or 160kph. But, nevertheless, my goal was achieved. In my mind.

We turned off the autostrada at Pieve Santo Stefano just 10kms east of Caprese and a few hundred metres lower. As we started the climb I noticed some thing that looked like a start-line mostly covered in rubber. Of the next dozen or so turns I saw some additional concrete work painted red and white on some of the inside corners. Looks like a hill-climb course, I thought. When I got home I hit the mighty Google and sure enough from the town for the next 7kms is the famous Lo Spina hill-climb course, a climb of international renown. Over two days in June since 1965 cars of all different types, from Fiat 500's to F2 cars, race the clock and in some instances each other, up the mountain. A number of the world's best F1 drivers have raced over this course including the late, great Gilles Villenueve. One successful driver described it as "racetrack naturally attached to the mountain."

Italian sign-posts let us down again failing to tell us about the turn-off to Caprese so we ended up driving all the way to La Verna and them taking the remote back-road to Caprese. But life is always full of surprises. Along the lonely road we saw a badger cross the road and two deer grazing in a field. We ate our cheese from yesterday, some grapes, melon, tomatoes and bread with the rest of the vino rosso from two nights ago for dinner and the got ready to continue our trip to Venice tomorrow.