Spoleto
Trip Start
Mar 16, 2006
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4
6
Trip End
Mar 30, 2006
Spoleto,
Italy
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
After the fire we decided to do a walking tour of Rome. It was very enjoyable and pretty low key. We started at the Vatican and then went and bought some ice cream. After that we went to the Jewish Quarter, the Cat Sanctuary,the Pantheon, the Forum, and the Colosseum. All in all it was an exhausting day and we wound up in the small city of Spoleto.
Tuesday--March 22, 2006
Spoleto is one of the most beautiful Italian cities that we have been to. We arrived last night and wound up in a beautiful hotel that even normal people would stay at. The city is surrounded by a magnificent gorge and a medieval wall. We stayed in the Old City. We walked around for awhile trying to find something open to eat and finally met some locals who showed us the one open restaurant. The food was delicious and reasonably priced.
Today we decided to hike the area around the gorge and the small village of Monteluco. It was a challenging hike but very beautiful. It was very sunny so we decided to leave our coats at the hotel. This seemed like a fine idea at the time, but later on we decided it was not a very swift idea. The hike itself was about 5-6 miles uphill and we passed abandoned mountain shrines and went through a canopied forest. We visited a very old Church of San Pietro and we were also able to walk across an old aqueduct, the Ponte delle Torri. The hike ended with a visit to a small convent-monastery at the top of the mountain which was once the refuge of St. Francis of Assisi. There was not much to do at the top of the mountain and it was getting close to dusk so we decided to walk to main road down. This was when we discovered it was not a very bright idea to go up without coats. Luckily a local picked us up and drove us down the rest of the way which would have been at least a seven mile walk.
When we arrived back in town, we went to the Romanesque style cathedral at the center of town and then back the hotel. We decided to relax a little before heading for dinner. Tomorrow we head to Florence.
