Itinerary

Day 1 – Depart for Rome

Day 2 – You will arrive in Rome this morning where you will be met by your tour escort who will take you to your waiting motorcoach. You will then continue to Assisi, birthplace of St. Francis, where you will have dinner and overnight at your hotel.

Day 3 – This morning you will begin with a walking tour of Assisi. You will visit the San Francesco Basilica, consisting of two churches above a crypt. In the upper basilica are Giotto’s magnificent frescoes of scenes from the life of St. Francis. The lower church contains frescoes by Simone Martini, Cimabue and Pietro Lorenzetti as well as the tomb of St. Francis. You will also see the Santa Maria Degli Angeli Church and Santa Chiara Church. After your walking tour concludes, you will depart Assisi on your way to Florence. Dinner at a local restaurant. Overnight will be at your hotel in Florence.

On the Way

There are 29 of us on the trip. Most are departing from either Dallas or Houston on Day 1. A couple of people went a day or two early and will meet us at the Rome airport. Dave and I booked our flights independently but scheduled to coincide with the arrival of the main group flight coming from Dallas via Philadelphia on American Airlines. Our United Airlines flights were from Houston via Chicago. I wasn’t real excited about either choice for late February, but it is what it is. Sure enough, there was a blizzard hitting the Northeastern US when it came time to leave. Luckily it passed Chicago with little effect, so our flights were all on time. However, Philly, NY, Boston, etc. had major cancellations. Amazingly, the AA flight from DFW to Philly that the group was on was one of the handful of flights that was not cancelled. When we met everyone at the airport, they said it was because AA had 90-something crew members on that flight that they needed to get to Philly! God is already watching out for everyone on this trip.

We did have a handful of people whose flights were re-routed from Houston that had to meet us later that night in Assisi and one couple that wasn’t able to join us until the following day in Florence. But eventually, we all arrived safe and sound, if not tired!

Our local tour manager for the trip, Flavio, met us outside baggage claim and led us to our motorcoach and driver, Enzo, to load up and drive the 2.5 hours to Assisi.

On the way to Assisi, we made a short stop for lunch at a roadside stop with a couple of cafes. Everyone said that the “gas station pizza” there was some of the best they’d ever had! 

Arrival in Assisi

Like many of the towns in central Italy, Assisi is on a hill. As its streets are all very narrow in the old town, buses cannot access it and park essentially at the bottom. Thankfully, the hotel was able to send a small van to transfer our luggage, because it was quite a hike up the hill to our hotel, the Hotel Giotto.

Our hotel and the view from our window in the late afternoon.

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Flavio offered to take anyone who wanted to meet him a little later on an unofficial walk around the town. Although I was tired, I decided to go check things out, while Dave opted to stay at the hotel and rest.

The town is slightly more crowded than normal for February because it is the 800^th anniversary of the death of St. Francis and for the first time, they have decided to put his bones on public display. So, pilgrims are coming from everywhere.

Part of my reason for going this afternoon, besides it being a gorgeous day, was the hope of getting inside the San Francesco Basilica to see the frescoes by Giotto as we were not scheduled to enter the main (upper) church the next day on our official tour. I was second-guessing myself though when Flavio turned and started up several major sets of stairs! Whew! Then even more uphill walking.

San Francesco Basilica – Upper Church and Tower

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In addition to the pilgrims, police are everywhere, too, controlling various access points. Thankfully, Flavio was able to talk our group past the security checkpoints, and we were able to enter the church to see the 28 frescoes depicting the life of St. Francis painted roughly between 1297-1304.   

Giotto (1267-1337) was influential in breaking from the flat Byzantine style of painting to a more realistic 3-dimensional style. It seems that many of the works attributed to him, however, are in dispute, including those we saw in the upper Basilica of St. Francis. No pictures are allowed, but you can check them out here.

From there we hiked to the Town Hall Square (Piazza del Comune) and Flavio pointed out various additional places to explore in the area on the opposite side of the town. He gave us a meeting time back at the fountain if we wanted to follow him back to the hotel and we dispersed on our further explorations.

Unfortunately, I’m currently undergoing an alignment process on my teeth and didn’t have my “puller” with me to remove the aligners in order to indulge. Probably for the best as there will be ample opportunities in the days ahead, and I’ll make sure to always have my “puller” container with me from now on!

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Our group dinner was in the hotel’s restaurant where we were served a 3-course meal with soup, a beef dish, and dessert. We sat with friends, Martha Lou and Bill, who were also on the 2022 Baylor Greece/Turkey tour with us, and made some new friends, too. Then, it was early to bed after a long couple of days and prayers that the jet lag wouldn’t have us waking up at 3am!

Our Assisi Official Walking Tour

The temp was a brisk 44 when we opened the curtains to check the weather for Day 3 and observed the fog over the valley below as the sun rose.

We anticipated a sunny day with temps rising to mid-60s in the afternoon. After breakfast, we put all our luggage including carry-ons out for porterage back down the hill to our bus while we hiked back up the hill to the San Francesco Basilica for our timed viewing of St. Francis’ mortal remains followed by an official tour of the town with our local guide. As someone raised in the Baptist tradition of the Christian faith, I don’t really understand all the customs, rituals, and beliefs of the Catholic Church, but I can respect and appreciate their devotion to those concepts.

The viewing of St. Francis’ bones was in the lower church of the basilica (built 1228-1230) which was also beautifully decorated with frescoes by Giotto, Cimabue, and others. St. Francis’ tomb is under this church and has limited access. As previously mentioned, this is the first public viewing since he died in 1226. No pictures were allowed inside.

Entry to Lower Church at the Basilica; Courtyard in the Basilica/Convent Complex

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Our local guide, Merica (sp?), then met us and took us slowly through the town, navigating the pilgrim-crowded streets often shared with the occasional small car or service vehicle trying to traverse the medieval town. She was entertaining and informative while providing additional biographical information about Francis, a history and cultural understanding of the region, including the divisions between the various city-states of Italy, which exist still today following the unification of Italy in 1861.

We visited the interior of the Santa Maria Sopra Minerva – originally built in the 1^st century B.C. as a Temple of Minerva obvious from the exterior, then converted to a church in 1539, and remodeled in the baroque style during the 17^th century. This is the building standing in juxtaposition with the 14th century Town Hall Tower (finished in 1342) on the square (Piazza del Comune) with the Fountain of the Three Lions.

We walked by one of the oldest hospitals in Italy, established in 1267, and since 1746 it serves the poor. The fresco remnants on the exterior are by students of Giotto.

On the opposite side of town from the San Francesco Basilica, we found the Basilica of St. Clare. Clare (Chiara in Italian) was a contemporary of Francis who founded the first order for women. The views from the piazza overlook were amazing. Although the placement of a merry-go-round here seemed incongruous with the basilica!

There, we also viewed the body of the first millennial saint, Carlo Aticus, a 15-year-old boy who died from leukemia in 2006 and was canonized in 2025. He is known as the “patron saint of the internet” for his use of digital media to promote Catholic devotion. His hands and face are covered with a silicon mask. He is dressed in blue jeans and what appears to be a sweatshirt or hoodie – forever a typical 2000’s teenager.

After saying “arrivederci” to Merica, we walked down to the bus park to be re-united with Enzo and our luggage and continue to our next stop at the Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli in the valley below. The dome of this huge cathedral is built directly over the small chapel where Francis found the cross which has become identified with him and where he received his calling to obedience, poverty, and chastity. The site of his death is also maintained just a few yards away in a small grotto within this church. After a walk through the rose gardens (not blooming in February, of course) with the statue of Francis, we had free time for lunch and gelato before continuing on to Florence.

Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli – opened 1679

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I’ll close this section with the early 20^th century prayer, originally in French, which has come to be known as the “Prayer of St. Francis”:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Lord, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in forgiving that one is forgiven,
it is in dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Arrival in Florence

After about a 2.5-hour drive, we arrived in the metropolitan city of Florence, northwest of Assisi.

Tour buses are very restricted in the busy and narrow confines of central Florence. Hordes of tourists have been over-running the area for years (actually centuries), so like many other popular destinations, restrictions are being put into place. Therefore, once we disembarked the bus by our hotel in Florence, we didn’t see it again until we left two days later. Until then, we are using old-fashioned transportation – our feet.

The final two people joining the group arrived at the hotel in Florence, on Wednesday evening. We had a 15-minute brisk walk to the restaurant for our 3-course group dinner of spaghetti with meat sauce (fantastico!), chicken and roasted potatoes, and panna cotta. It was a heavy meal and most of us were thankful for the 15-minute walk back to the hotel, although after all the steps we’d put in on the hills of Assisi, some of us wished for the bus!

Needless to say, after two days with 5-6 miles of walking each day, we slept soundly our first night in Florence.