The cloud and threatening rain that dogged our last day in Rome became serious rain as we headed north to Assisi.  In fact, the downpour lasted all night and most of the morning of the following day. 

In the afternoon, with umbrella in hand, we walked to the local supermarket to stock up on a few items.  We escaped the rain but watched it settle in again for the night.  But the weather report said the next day would be fine and it was.  We purchased bus tickets and boarded the bus to ride up the very steep hill to the town of Assisi.

Known for being the birthplace of St. Francis, Assisi is very much a town of religious importance to the Roman Catholic Church with a large number of churches.  The Basilica of St. Francis is a site of pilgrimage. 

The construction of the Basilica began in 1228 immediately after the canonization of Francis of Assisi.  It consists of two churches, the Upper and the Lower, which has a a crypt, where St. Francis is buried.  Both churches are decorated with frescoes by such artists as Giotto and his contemporaries.  The frescoes are spectacular but unfortunately photography is forbidden.  There are more details and photos in Wikipedia for those who are interested.

We explored the town and had lunch in a restaurant built into a medieval house with arches. 

A fun experience, as was the gelato (of course) that we enjoyed later in our exploration.  We then walked down the hill, back to our campground.  Much more fun to walk down than up!

Our final stop in Italy was in Lucca.  This was during Holy Weekend and we were unable to find a space near Cinque Terre as everything was full.  We spent four nights there and it rained solidly for two of the days (and turned our site to mud!) but again we had one sunny day to visit Lucca. 

We walked a section of the city wall before deciding to rent a pedal surrey!  We actually rented an electric one and enjoyed a full circuit of the town in splendor and ease!  Lucca was a fun town to wander, with a busy pedestrian shopping street and lots of restaurants.  

Lots of European towns have vestiges of ancient walls. In Lucca, the circuit of the medieval walls is complete and the walls are so wide, there is a road on top. (Thankfully limited to bicycles and pedestrians.) Lucca’s walls are so spectacular, that they even have their own museum and you can walk the streets and follow the outline of the old Roman walls.

We even found the old Roman amphitheater. The galleries have long since been converted to houses, but the arena floor boasts a range of restaurants. We went elsewhere as this was the only place in Lucca where we were accosted by touts.

On Easter Monday we set off for Genoa again in preparation for the ferry to Morocco.  It was an interesting drive that followed the coast line.  We had already noted that most houses in Italy are painted a light brown, however as we drove, we began to see houses of pink, or blue, or darker brown.  As mentioned earlier, we dd not get to see the Cinque Terre towns, but we did get some idea of them from the hill towns with varied colored houses.

We had booked a camper storage lot for the night before our ferry departure as the ferry check in began at 7:00 AM. We asked at a campground but the owner was skeptical – the road was narrow and everyone double parked. The owner of the storage lot assured us that, no matter how narrow it looked, we would fit. He was right, but we held our breaths! The lot was huge, winding back at multiple levels. And he even had a dump station and drinking water. While most of the vehicles were in storage, we were clearly not the first to spend the night.

We arrived about 7:30 AM and received boarding passes very quickly from GNV.  However. we also needed police clearance and the police did not arrive until 8.30 am.  There was, of course, a huge queue by then!  We declined to join it and waited for the crowd to thin before standing in line.  Passports stamped, we waited in line until about 11:00 AM when we were boarded on the ferry.  We found our cabin and moved in, this time equipped with warm clothes for the hyper GNV air conditioning. Ferries can’t match the standards of cruise ships, but this was not bad and even had a double bed.

Two nights to Morocco!