The Wonder of Assisi
I woke up at 12:30 when Christine got up but managed to get back to sleep an slept until 6 a.m. Maybe it was the Benedryl. Still had a headache. Maybe it was the wine. I hung out in the common area and had a great time talking more with the bike rider from Belgium, Sonja. What an amazing woman. Even biked over the Alps. Seems to love being alone and making it all happen. Later I even found out that a year ago she had a biking accident and was hit by a car totally messing up her shoulder. But with a little hard work and therapy, here she is on her summer bike trek.
We went up to breakfast at a little before 10 and had the whole terrace are to ourselves. What a view. Felt like you were in the 1500s. Gorgeous vies of tile and domes and cupolas and cranes.
Medieval Festival and Massimo We hung out until after 11 and as we were heading down the hill we ran into part of the medieval festival that was going on in the main piazza. The group we say was a bunch of young men doing a medieval flag twirling and throwing ceremony. Pretty impressive and want a great thing to be able to see.
Medieval festival we stumbled upon
We then wandered down to Massimo’s studio and what a great time we had. He was all there by himself and we informed him that we wanted to go BIG.
Checking out ideas for size and color
We discussed what we wanted and we commissioned him to create it. He took photos and wrote notes. We asked for the sky to be a certain way and for the colors to match out main wall. We also said that we would send a picture of the wall to be sure parts of it matched well. We took a bunch of photos nd he even had the next door neighbor come in to take a photo of all of us. It was just a fabulous experience in EVERY way. Exceeded any expectation I could have ever had. He said it would take about eight weeks and that he would send a photograph to see whether or not we liked it and if we didn’t, he would be fine with creating another one. He would even show it with several different frames to see which we liked best.
He also invited us to join him and the couple we had seen in the gallery on Friday for dinner at his favorite pizza place in Assisi. He took Christine’s cell number and said he would call with more details, but we would probably get together around 8:30.
Assisi Walk. To Go Down Means You Will Have to Go Up
We headed out to try and find the church of St.Peter and after a long walk down we found it and nothing was going on there. We thought that more of the medieval festival might be there. We found the entry gate and a bathroom and then headed up to the Basilica of San Francesco. We could not rent head sets for another hour so we just went in and sat and listed to our free one with the headphones we got at the Vatican. Not enough info on the Giotto frescoes but I decided it would do.
Beautiful lady at San Francesco
New fashion statement: The sandoot!
We wandered back up toward the hotel stopping and the other Massimo gallery where Joanne was today. And took a few more photos for ideas.
This is the size of the big one
Dinner spot with Massimo later tonight..
Gary's table. It's still there.
Hotel Hike sequence. Up to La Fortezza.
We got back to the hotel about 2 and had some good relaxing time. I work on the blog, talked with Sonja and eventually we had tea upstairs. No one could ever figure out how to work the self-serve coffee machine.
Super Sonja. Se has biked all the way from Belgium to Assisi and then on to Rome. No really. She is my hero!
Thunderstorms and a Crossbow Competition
As we were returning to the hotel, we felt a few light sprinkles which in a while turned into a full blown thunder storm. The booms were quite impressive and we even saw a bit of lightening. We began to here some more commotion in the piazza including drums and trumpets and so we decided to check it out. It was actually pretty cold and I had to go up and get our jackets. What was going on was a parade with drums and crossbows and pageantry. What do you do when you see a parade? You follow it to see where it’s going. It went down to Santa Chiara and what turned out was that it was a grand cross bow shooting contest with about 20 different from two different sides or teams. The narration was all in Italian so we had no idea what was going on, but t was great fun to watch. We stayed until nearly 7:30.
More medieval festival. This one ended in a crossbow competition
Dinner with Massimo or USA v. Ghana? Which would you choose?
As 8:30 approached I did find he US v. Ghana on the television so we had to stay and watch a little. And you guessed it. We were out playing Ghana but had a defensive breakdown and boom Ghana scored in the first ten minutes. The US was behind once again. Good time to head off to dinner. We easily found pizza place called Minachi and finally found Massimo, Joanne and the couple from Hong Kong, Geoge and Amy Coombs.
Massimo and Joanne at Il Monachi.
What fun. Our new best friends.
Caprese
Christine's carbonara pizza
They were already eating an appetizer pizza and enjoying a great bottle of Unbrian Rosso. We had a great time laughing and joking around. Massimo is really funny and loves to tease. We ordered a capresi and I had a prosciutto and funghi pizza and Christine has a carbonara pizza.
Proscuitto crudo and funghi
Hong Kong humanities teacher George Coombes and Amy
Lemon cake
Our friend at Il Monachi.
George and Amy are both teachers. He teaching Humanities and had come to Rome for a wedding of one of their former students. I guess they just happened to find Massimo’s gallery and because Joanne was Chinese they mad a real connection. Then they fell in love with his stuff. We had a great night of laughter, wine, pizza and conversation. We ended the night with a great lemon cake and a song from the owner. Perfetto. To top it off Massimo took care of it all.
Final group shot
A good night song from the owner of Il Monachi
No talk even with the owner of a bill. We got back to the hotel and I hoped to get a score from the game, but the internet is down and all we got from Christine’s phone was “Devastated” from Andrei’s Facebook status. It looks like another heartbreaking loss. I will be very curious to get all the details in the morning. It was about 12:30 when I finally went to bed.
I couldn't be more pumped for the awesome time you had!!! Great connection with Massimo too...amazingly cool...
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