Ravenna

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Hooray!!! We checked out of our awful hotel in Venice this morning! Just a quick bit of information about the hotel: the bathrooms are SO small that the toilet is right next to the "shower" space, separated only by a shower curtain. Therefore, if you sit on the toilet, your feet are actually in the "shower". It was a SPECIAL hotel!

So we left Venice and drove toward Assisi, but again we stopped along the way to check out another town. This time, our intermediate destination was Ravenna. Ravenna was a charming place! We visited the Basilica of San Vitale, and interesting octagonal-shaped building that is sinking into the earth. We had to descend a flight of stairs to reach the entrance. This Byzantine structure boasted some of the most beautiful mosaics that we had seen on the entire trip thus far. We walked out of the basilica and across the yard a short distance to a small, plain looking building. This building was anything but plain on the inside. It was a burial chamber for Galla Placidia and possibly some of her Roman emporer relations. The inside is covered everywhere you look with mosaics. It looked almost pristine, and it seemed impossible to imagine that something which looked so beautiful and new could have been created centuries and centuries ago. That was truly one of the artistic highlights of this trip for me!

After we left this site, we walked a little way through the streets of Ravenna, and eventually ended up in the Piazza del Popolo. Before leaving us, our guide showed us the monument in which Dante Alighieri (author of The Divine Comedy) is buried. We then had some free time, which I ended up spending with George and Patti Daniell. We found a little place to have pizza, and we had a very nice conversation. Then, we walked over to see Dante's tomb up close. It was very nice inside, and I signed the guest book. We headed over to our bus and finished the rest of the trip to Assisi.

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