March 22, 2016: 6th Day

We decide to wake early so that we may enjoy our last day in Venice. We must catch the 1:30 train to Florence and then on to Assisi arriving at 7:00.   We enjoy a nice breakfast of croissants, Nutella, yogurt, blood orange juice (that looks like tomato juice), and hard boiled eggs and then out we go.

Our first stop is to ride in a Gondola. How could we come to Venice and not ride a gondola? Our Gondolier tells us about the buildings as pass through the canals. We see the difference in when the tide is in and the tide out. We learn that some of the buildings are old palaces. Most of the buildings are between 400 to 700 years old. We are enchanted by the history of the city.

After wandering the twisting, turning streets and shopping on the water front for gifts for a couple of hours we catch a water bus down to the Grand Canal to the train station. We visit with a lovely older lady from Germany who is here to hear the opera and planning a trip to Cuba. She wants to see it before too much changes from the reign of Fidel Castro. 

We arrive in Assisi at 7:00 and take a taxi to the San Colette Monestary. The streets are very dark and the wind is blowing ferociously.  We cannot figure out how to get inside the Monestary. There is no obvious opening. Finally a car pulls up and parks. We ask for direction and a woman takes us up the hill a bit further and we find a call box and are buzzed in, much to our relief. The stone buildings of the Monestary are made of the rose colored stone that Assisi is known for.  There are gardens behind and below the buildings. We are taken to a building next door. Each of our rooms have our own baths. My room has a small balcony with a view of the valley below. It is getting late and we are hungry. We walk down the cobbled road to a restaurant. The menu is all in Italian and a little unusual. They serve wild boar and pigeon. I decide to try the boar and I must say it was delicious. Scotti sticks with a sure thing and has fettuccini with a meat sauce. 

We get back to the Monestary around 10:00. We have no wifi here so it will be difficult to post the blog and be in contact with home. It isvery quiet and peaceful. We are very tired and quickly drift off to sleep.

Lessons Learned: Surrounded by prayer, wrapped in care, we rest.