Switzerland to Assisi

Lugano: We wound our way along the shoreline of Lake Maggiore to the Swiss town of Lucerne (Lugano in Italian). A beautiful town with lake front walkways and wonderful shops selling Swiss watches and Chocolate!! While Switzerland is neutral, they have an army and have the ability to seal their borders by closing off the highway tunnels leading into the country. With all the mountains, many of the roads have long tunnels to avoid steep and winding roads (although there are still plenty of those!).

Verona: At lunch time we arrived in Verona, home of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. A small balcony, purported to be Juliet’s, was crushed with tourists, so we headed for the main piazza. There is a Roman coliseum still in use today for concerts and events and we could hear musicians rehearsing as we sat in a café and had a glass of wine and a bite to eat. It’s a University town and we saw lots and lots of students strolling about.

Venice: We arrived in Venice in the late afternoon and upon leaving the bus and watching our luggage being loaded onto a boat for delivery to our hotel, we took a gondola ride. There was a lot of boat traffic at the point where we boarded the gondolas seemed unstable, so we were glad when we turned off of the main thoroughfare into a smaller and more peaceful canal. It’s quite a way to see Venice! We had heard that Venice was dirty and smelly, but we did not find that at all. It is old, sinking and many of the buildings appear to need a great deal of reconstruction work yet it is still quite beautiful.

We walked to our hotel which was situated on the Grand Canal, and after dinner we took another boat to St. Mark’s square where we enjoyed some Italian Red at an outside café, listened to a live music presentation surrounded by the beautiful buildings all lighted up for evening!

The next day we toured St. Mark’s square by day, saw a demonstration of Murano glass blowing and strolled around looking at the shops. We had lunch at the oldest restaurant in Venice, Florian’s, served by waiters who look like they could have been there from the beginning! It was very elegant and priced accordingly!

In the early afternoon we took a larger boat for a tour of Venice Lagoon, dotted with so many islands it’s hard to count, to the Island of Bergamo – a fishing village and the home of handmade Venice lace. The genuine lace is so expensive it is impossible to buy– a handkerchief costs hundreds of dollars – so the shops were filled with imitations from China! We ate a late lunch of seafood in a fun restaurant before returning to our hotel by boat.

We didn’t have dinner that evening, but we had a bottle of wine sitting on the terrace of our hotel overlooking the Grand Canal and watching Venice change from day to night!

Classe: Leaving Venice we headed south to the town of Classe, outside Ravenna, to the Church of St. Apollinaris en Classe. While so many of the cathedrals were breathtaking with art and decoration, this church was simple, decorated with beautiful mosaics. It was very special, and probably our favorite for just that reason. Sometimes, even in Italy, less is more.

Assisi: We arrived in the hilltop town of Assisi in the late afternoon and carried our hand luggage up several Italian blocks to our hotel which was right adjacent to the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. The Basilica itself has two levels - a Romanesque lower level with a Gothic upper level. St. Francis is buried there and through our guide we learned a great deal about his life and his tremendous impact on the Catholic Church. We watched a procession of monks and nuns gather in the piazza in the late afternoon and file into the church for a Mass.

Below us on the plain we could see the white tents of an Arab prince who had brought over his horses for an endurance race in the area. That evening we, and the surrounding area, were treated to a tremendous display of fireworks courtesy of the Prince.