LIVING LIKE A ROMAN

Ok so today we went out to see more of the little towns, but it was a bit further out this time....


The weather forecast was not wrong, it is so hot today! Not even full blast air con and windows open in the car can relieve you but the house is a little cooler inside :) It was again just the three of us because Matteo had to go to university in Rome and Lori and the grandmother (still don't know her name....but its never been important cause we sort of just smile at each other) went to the market. So we drove out for an hour or so headed towards a small little town called Greccio...it is really beautiful and quite a religious little town. As you drive in the road is sort of framed by the canopy of the trees (you can see this on google maps) and it is a lot more lush and green than where we are where it is quite dry.... Greccio the actual residential area is tiny but it's main attraction is a church built in honor of John the Baptist. The church is fascinating because it has been built into the rock of the mountain side where it lies and is really really high up, meaning a long, hard trek up loads of stairs needs to be worth the view, which it definitely was! Attached to the church is the old monastery (not used any more), a whole lot of exhibitions about how it used to function and bedrooms of important saints like St Francesco. This sort of church/property (its not just a little church), is full of people who are being blessed or listening to mass plus the occasional tourist but it is much more for personal enrichment opposed to tourism like in Rome. The building is famous for its display of nativity cribs....yes, this sounds a bit odd, but honestly, it is so interesting! In the museum type building, there are just hundreds of these cribs displaying the nativity scene and each crib represented by its country. So for example, we saw the traditional crib for Canada, Russia, Spain, Italy, etc, you know, thats just to name a few, there were so many (although I couldn't find SA). They were all sort of build into the walls of the building, so like a notch had been dug out and then it was set up in there. Some of the cribs were painted on the wall, others were sculptures, some little glass figures, other made of wool (like the one we set up) and some we carved into the stones of the walls (because the building is all stone as it is carved into the mountain) but wow, you'd be surprised how beautiful and interesting cribs are....


We also stopped at another little church (this one really was little) called Fonte Colombo...its is super old and it was the first church built to honor and by St Francesco (haha, its quite funny because in Italy they called a Saint, San...so the whole time they were saying San Francesco but it sounded like San Fransico (the city) so I was really confused :)) it was a really pretty little church, quite quiet with a little court yard for the nuns and monks and a healing room and confessional and stuff so I think it is still used a bit. The reason why it is so famous (well for a little town in Italy) is because when St Francesco lived here, he had to make his way round to all the surrounding cities and so he walked 109km from there to Rome so a lot of people take this walk (obviously shortened) in honor of him although thank goodness in this heat we didn't....


So then we came home and had lunch, salad, venus snitchel, baked beans (not from the can though, but I decided not to have anyway), bread, mozzarella and tomato and gelato to finish (yes I will probably come back enormous, but the food is just so good :)) 


So that's it for now, we are doing our sort of routinely mid-afternoon break of reading or face-booking or this, etc but later we are going to see more towns I think, although luckily they are a bit closer I think...I know Farfa is one of them :) I think that Sara boyfriend is also coming with us (they've been going out for 2 years!) and he speaks English :) and we will probably hire another movie tonight, which is nice :) 


Will write about the rest of the day later.....
-Caity xx