(This is a repost of our first post on Assisi, which I had to delete because the Italian keyboard inserted some kind of funky line-break character that messed up the blogs formatting and put the right-hand sidebar way down at the bottom. Computers! My computer acumen doesn’t feel too sharp right now).

Home of St. Francis and St. Clare!

Katie and I are in Assisi, arriving yesterday in the evening. It was a long trip from Austin to Dallas to London (where Katie’s luggage got stuck), to Rome and then by train to Assisi, but God smoothed the way and we made it.

We have a beautiful old hotel with a balcony overlooking a road leading to the main square in the center of the town. Katie’s luggage is supposed to arrive tonight at the hotel. British Airways had some problem getting it onto our plane, so it didn’t show up when we got to Rome, but the nice lady at the airport figured out that it never left London.

We ate a lovely lunch at an osteria recommended in Rick Steve’s book–three courses with salami, sausage, pasta, soup, bread, coffee, wine, etc.! We also spent an hour in Santa Chiara’s basilica praying, i.e. St. Clare, and we are going to Mass there this evening at 4:30 pm. There are about 10 parishes in this little town on the hill, and Masses at many different hours.

We plan to relax and take it easy everyday, visiting the main St. Francis Basilica probably tomorrow and exploring the area.
We have already met one nun, a sister of St. Anne, from the Philippines, and then two brothers who are Australian seminarians on a pilgrimage. They were very cool young guys. They told us about a very prayerful place about 4 kilometers from the top of the hill of Assisi, so we are going to walk there one day and see what they are talking about.

Katie has been great, helping us figure out where to go when I get confused and boldly asking locals questions that help us sort things out. I managed to buy some salami and cheese from the local meat market, nodding my head and saying Si whenever the Italian shop keeper asked me questions I didn’t understand.

We are going to email our priest-friend, Father Jaeger, who vacations in Austin at our parish and who is a Franciscan friar with a monastery in Rome. We may find a time before we head back home to visit him, perhaps right before we fly back.