Italy 2014 Day 05 – Friday 24 October

Michelangelo's David

We were up no earlier, at 06:00, but more rushed as we had to set our suitcases outside the rooms by 06:45.  Then it was down to breakfast for 07:00 and assembling in the lobby to leave the Hotel Giotto at 08:00 to walk down to the bus park.  And so our time in Assisi came to an end.  I think everyone on the pilgrimage agreed that it was the high point of the trip – quieter, less crowded, not a bit less rushed but altogether more enjoyable than the rest of our time in Italy.  That extended from the religious sights we attended to the hotel itself, which had a quaint character that was lacking from our domiciles in Florence and Rome.  Especially with regard to the common meals we enjoyed in the hotels’ respective restaurants, Giotto far outstripped either the Croce di Malta in Florence or the Hotel Cicerone in Rome in both food and hospitality.  But we could not stay in Assisi forever.

Tuscan countryside

The drive from Assisi to Florence was a bit more than two hours.  Even the Tuscan countryside sported extensively rugged hills – really mountains – that I had not expected.  Florence itself [LINK] is pretty flat, in a valley on the Arno River, surrounded by highlands.  I don’t know where to start regarding Florence – it is such a historically and culturally significant city – so I’ll confine myself to a few random and general facts and observations.  The name in Italian is actually Firenze, so it’s a bit more different from what we’re used to in English than is Rome (Roma), but the meaning is the same, the City of Flowers, and the symbol is one we’re all familiar with in Louisiana – the lily that the French call fleur-de-lys.  Founded as a Roman city by the Dictator Sulla in 80 BC, the city’s real importance commenced a thousand years later, when it became a center of medieval cloth manufacture, trade, and finance.  Its importance became incalculable as the birthplace and epicenter of the Italian Renaissance in the 15^th century, more or less concurrent with the rise of the Medici family of clothiers-become-bankers to political dominance which they would maintain for about three hundred years.  It eventually would serve a brief stint as one of the several successive capitals of the Kingdom of Italy in the 1860s.  Its cultural importance is highlighted by the fact that the Tuscan dialect became the standard for modern Italian.  [There are a number of Virtual Tours:  LINK]

Italy 2014 Day 04 – Thursday 23 October

I Pellegrini 
(Photo provided by Rick Johnson, taken by Alexis Darbonne)
(Larger at bottom with key)

[Well, from the lateness of this post you can see that my ambition of “live-blogging” this trip with daily updates ended up being a bust.  As I’ve mentioned already, one of the trade-offs of being part of a packaged trip like this and thus not having to worry about arrangements and so forth, just be where they said when they said – and this trip went off virtually flawlessly in that respect – is being on someone else’s schedule, and they drove us pretty hard.  It had to be that way, I understand, to get in all the things we wanted to do.  But by the end of each day mental as well as bodily weariness made it virtually impossible to think coherent thoughts much less compose an extended narrative.  A substantial three-course dinner, with wine, did not help the cause of blogging.  I did good to get notes jotted down in my pocket journal.  So I’m actually “back-writing” this – on the plane, just out of Rome, on the morning of Wednesday 29 October, just out of Italian air-space over the south of France!  Nevertheless, I’m going to write each day’s entry as if I were more timely … as I wanted to be!]

Italy 2014 Day 03 – Wednesday 22 October

The Cross from San Damiano,
currently in the Church of Saint Clare

Our wake-up call came at 06:30 to be ready for breakfast at 07:30 and departure from the lobby at 08:30.  Breakfast was meats, cheese, and bread, in addition to more American staples like scrambled eggs, bacon, and cereal.  Plus a coffee machine, juices, and fruits.  From the lobby we walked uphill (everything seems to be uphill in Assisi!) to the Basilica of St. Francis, the mother church of the Franciscan order.  (Virtual tours:  LINK)  

The Basilica of
San Francesco

Built into the side of a hill, the Basilica contains two churches – the Upper Church and the Lower Church – in addition to the real tomb of St. Francis in a crypt below.  Because of the danger the saint’s relics would be absconded with by a rival town (such as Assisi’s traditional enemy, Perugia), although the Lower Church was specifically built to house a magnificent shrine for St. Francis the actual relics were hidden below, and ultimately forgotten only to be rediscovered in the 19^th century!  [Thu 10/23 08:30 … I found I could not type on a moving bus…]  The three are literally stacked one atop the other!

We heard Mass in the Franciscan brothers’ chapel, also known as the "Peace Chapel," said this time by Fr. Ryan assisted by Fr. Chris – our first time ever hearing the Mass celebrating the new Feast of St. John Paul II the Great. 

The Franciscan Brothers' Chapel

Italy 2014 Day 02 – Tuesday 21 October

Assisi
[SOURCE]

We landed at the Rome airport – actually Leonardo da Vinci International Airport at Fiumicino, down on the coast near Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber River, ten or twelve miles from Rome itself – at about 07:10 local time.  By 08:40 we had finished passport control and claimed our baggage, and met our Italian “escort,” Debra – actually a British expatriate married to an Italian – who works with Magnificat Tours.  She had us on the bus and headed to our first destination, Assisi, the home of St. Francis, by 09:30.  Our bus-driver for the entire trip will be one Luigi.  We are a total of 46 pilgrims, mostly from Louisiana – Natchitoches with Fr. Ryan Humphries of the Minor Basilica of the Immaculate Conception; a group from Vacherie with his friend Fr. Chris Decker of Baton Rouge; and a few outliers from Lafayette, New Orleans, and even a father and son from Little Rock, Arkansas.  And Alexis, the representative from Magnificat.

Italy 2014 Day 01 – Monday 20 October

My view for about ten hours...

Well, the long-awaited day finally came … very early.  Actually, with packing and preparing for the trip, we barely got to sleep at all.  I hadn’t actually intended to sleep at all, but I couldn’t sleep as late as I wanted to Sunday morning, and after about 18 hours with my contacts in, I just couldn’t take it anymore.  And by about 01:30 we were both pretty much done, so out my contacts went, and out we went … sort of.  I kept thinking of things until my alarm went off at 02:30, when up we came, in my contacts went again, and by about 02:50 we were in the car headed for St. Mary’s School.

To make a long story short, we got to the school, got our luggage on the bus, heard Mass in the chapel promptly at 03:15, and were rolling out of Natchitoches right on time at 04:00.  With one stop along the way – by the way, Exit 571A, Texas Best Smokehouse, has a great breakfast! – we got into DFW only a few minutes late (I didn’t note the time).  We met up with the Magnificat representative accompanying us for the pilgrimage, Alexis Darbonne, who gave us our etickets.  TSA was typically … impatient (I don’t want Homeland Security paying me a visit!), but now at approx. 10:00 we are sitting at gate E17 waiting for a 10:50 flight to Atlanta.  [20 Oct 10:07 CDT].

To make a much longer story short [because it kind of is a blur at this point, Tuesday evening] our flights to Atlanta (where the non-Natchitoches pilgrims joined us) and thence to Rome went great.  I actually slept about four hours on the latter, which didn’t keep me from being exhausted through the day on Tuesday ….

One note:  There were obviously many other pilgrim groups on the flight from Atlanta to Rome, and at least a dozen priests and religious, including (we discovered in the Rome airport), Fr. Z who did our parish mission in March [LINK].  We felt very safe on that flight!

Final Pilgrimage Meeting (Tues 09 Sep)

Based on the new itinerary

I really should have written something before now.  But this semester is turning out to be more day-to-day work than I anticipated, considering I am teaching mostly on-line classes and not face-to-face, to accommodate being out of the classroom for effectively two weeks.  Of course, it was supposed to be entirely on-line, with no face-to-face, but early in the summer I was told we must offer at least one f2f section of the World Civ survey for incoming freshmen.  And that means I’m not entirely out of the classroom this semester, which would have been weird anyway.  I have a plan to cover the material during the period of my absence, so everything’s hunky-dory there. 

Nevertheless, in typical Absent-minded Professor fashion, in anticipation of an “easier” semester, I had already decided to put all that “free time” to good use in much-needed overhauls of two of my classes … and that’s turning out to be more complicated in the case of one of them than I really expected.  It’s amazing how much of my material throughout the semester is integrated – content, exercises, and so forth – so that changing something here necessitates adjusting something there … and there … and there … and discovering that to do this at some point later in the semester necessitates me having done that sometime earlier to properly set it up.  No wonder you hear the tales of the older professors whose lecture notes haven’t changed in forty years!

Update ... The Final Toll

Just a short update here -- two items.  

First, about a month or so ago Magnificat Travel announced the "final" meeting* with us pilgrims (I hear John Wayne's voice whenever I think of us that way [LINK]) before our departure.  It will be in the MBIC Parish Hall on Tuesday 9 September at 18:00.  Only a few days before that announcement, I had inquired via email if they could give out any more specific information as to our itinerary, i.e., what order we will be visiting the various destinations, how long we will stay at each, etc.  Anne is really wanting to 'net-scout places for lunch (with the help of Rick Steves' travel guides, of course).  Lunch is the only meal each day that is not part of the package, which means we're on our own.  The answer was that that will be part of the meeting.  Grrr.  As of today, the pilgrimage page at Magnificat [LINK] doesn't have any more specific information either.  Surely they have worked that out by now.  I figure this is probably a standardized, package tour, but maybe I'm wrong.

Second, today we got emails with the final toll for the trip.  As mentioned in my first post [LINK] -- so long ago now, it seems -- even though we paid in full up front last October, at that time there was still a $400-$750 "airline fees and taxes" assessment to be made.  Per person, of course.  Well, as I figured, it ends up being at the high end of that range -- $728.47.  So we owe just shy of another $1500.  

So here's the total pilgrimage cost for us two:

$2799 base price per person

+ 225 insurance

3014

- 150 discount for paying in full by check

2874

x 2 persons

$5748 total paid

+

$728.47 taxes and fees, per person
x 2 persons
$1456.94 to be paid by 15 August

===========
$7204.94 GRAND TOTAL

Still a good deal for two persons, I know ... but ... owww!

It will be worth it, of course.  In truth, what we are getting is priceless.

Ciao!

____________

* I put "final" in quotations because it's only the second meeting.