Rome-assissi-florence

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Wow, so, a lot has gone on since the last blog. Where to begin...

Last day of Rome, this past Tuesday, was spent at the Colloseum and surrounding ruins. Amazingly, to us, Rome's weather is more horrrid than houston's! What had begun as a sunny day instantly became a stormy nightmare the moment we stepped out of the house. It was pouring, so we quickly dove into the Colloseum and chose a pretty good tour. It was incredible to us all to see the famous arena.

Afterwards, we had a slightly less impressive tour of the ruins of Ceaser's house and the old Forum. Our tour guide was... Interesting. He was quite passionate about somethings, such as the pronunciation of the Palatine hill, PAl-ah-teen, by the way, never pal-an-tine. It only got worse when the man was called halfway through the tour by his mom... Who apparenlty always calls at the worst times. One exciting thing was seeing the roman arcs of triumph, one which celebrated the romans' defeat over jerusalem. In it, the romans parade into rome holding the ark of the covenant, and this is the last record of the ark. Pretty crazy!

After the ruins we headed to Assissi, which we all agree is the most beautiful place in Italy. The view was gorgeous everywhere! We visited the basilicas of sts. Francis and Clare, and got to see their tombs. Both were incredibly beautiful. We spent the rest of wednesday walking around enjoying the beautiful town and scenery of the fields around it. Our funny incident for this town, when we arrived to assissi,weimmedoately noticed the beauty of the giant hillmits built on, as well as their strange signs. Europe has weird road signs, but this was especially strange. It said, "do not cross the rails" and had a picture of a man with one leg distinctly shorter. Obviously, being from assissi, we decided he must have been 'born on the side of a hill' so everyone walked crooked there. Those of you who haven't seen bringing up baby are missing out.

Wednesday night we took our train to florence, which, of course, arrived late, so eventually we were dumped out in what seemed like the shadiest part of town in the dark of night. Eventually we found our way to the hotel, which is gorgeous, part of an old church, and crashed. Today was insane, but that story will have to wait for the next blog.

We're missing you all! God bless!

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