The title is the only Italian (maybe even mostly correct) I will muster up for this posting as I write faster in English and its time to get this out here!! One of the main reasons I went there was to practice the Italian I had been learning on my own in the 6 years since my Seattle niece got married there. This was first time back since her wedding. As some of you know I stayed in Santa Maria Degli Angeli which is an uphill walk to Assisi and itself has important connections to San Francesco.
I stayed with my niece's very welcoming in-laws there and every day for three weeks (Sept 9-30th) went up to their restaurant in Assisi and ate with the family and the staff when they finished the first restaurant shift. How fortunate for me that I was able to buy gluten free products in the pharmacies and the chef, my niece's father-in-law, cooked them for me! Assisi is a beautiful town to walk around in and good excercise, in addition, with all the stairs and hills to climb.
I went to a wedding of one of the family members. Guests (and the bride and groom) came from Germany and Mexico and there were other relatives from other parts of Italy and me! The bride had to switch in the same paragraph from Italian to German to Spanish and back again.
I had planned to meet a felter and work with her in nearby Perugia but that didn't happen; but there was a lovely surprise visit from an etsy Italian friend and her husband.
An important part of the trip was the chance to speak and hear Italian for three solid weeks and toward the end of the trip I had the chance to take three four hour classes at a school in Assisi and my classmates were young monks and seminarians. I didn't do too badly but I could use about a year there!
One day on the family's land near Assisi there was the grape harvest with a chance to watch (and not work) and snatch a few tasty grapes in the basket before they went through the press.
The pictures (not in this order): one of the views up to Assisi and in Assisi or Santa Maria a pizzeria run by one of the family, one of the grape harvest, one from the wedding reception some other photos in Assisi and Santa Maria and even one of me peeking out (in my purple shirt) behind some family members of my niece's sister-in-law in a nearby town .
