I’m gonna have to skip around here because all my footage and pictures from the first few days in Italy were dumped on Trey’s laptop and he’s still over there until Friday. I will start with the day we left Rome=)
On our last morning in Rome we saw St. Theresa at the Santa Maria Della Vittoria and it was jaw-dropping incredible. I checked my email in the morning before we left and Tara had sent me a message saying it was a must see. She said,
“this is the sculpture - perhaps my favorite in all of italy and it happens to be in rome in a church called santa maria della vittoria - that i was telling you about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_of_St_Theresa
called the ecstasy of st. theresa, please please please go see it. the story goes that she had delusional (or divine depending on how you look at it) visions quite often and she had one where an angel was stabbing a golden spear repeatedly into her heart…but she liked it. exquisite pain, moaning, sexuality…the whole deal. you have to see it. bernini is my fav baroque sculptor - well he’s everyone’s fav that’s not special but he is amazing.”
Trey worked out for us to go see it on our way to pick up the rental car. It really was amazing. Spirituality and sensuality overlap to a point of total eclipse.
Then we drove up to Assisi but stayed in a house called Casa Rosa, a few miles past the aincient town. The property was complete with olive groves, bright green grassy fields, a river, a waterfall, a swimming pool and an amazing vegetable and herb and flower garden. And it even came with an orange tabby kitty! Sympa was his name and like 17 years old but sweet as can be. Trey and I treated him like he was our own. And there’s high speed internet!! Seriously, we couldn’t find one thing to complain about at this place.
Never did get to see the wild boars but I guess there are like 10 little piglets playing and running around at dawn and dusk. I thought I’d seen or heard of most beautiful places in this world but Assisi is not one of them. What an amazing surprise. We hiked down to a waterfall and swimming hole one day, then laid by the pool and sang and played the guitar. Came in for a rest, drove into the ancient town, taught Trey to get a stick shift from stopped to first gear, and then went to the most amazing dinner I’ve had here.
The gardens are so beautiful and everything is so lush and green. Anyone would absolutely love Gay, the British woman who owns and runs this place. She’s retired, speaks Italian and is a painter and just lovely. She lives in a loft at the end of the property filled with easels supporting all her latest masterpieces and the apartments are decorated with her paintings on the walls and furniture. Here are a series of photos of the apartment:
And dinner gets better every night! Tonight was the simplest of salads; arugula (they call it "rocket lettuce" here), and tomatoes. The tomatoes in Italy do sort of a Ratatouille-like thing for me where I’m taken back to my Grandmother’s garden. I spent countless summers eating her tomatoes like apples. They were as sweet as fruit and the tomatoes here are no different.
We were so sad to leave Assisi and Casa Rosa. Definitely one of those places you tell yourself you will make sure to see again.
