Italy Vacation-Sienna, Assisi, Amalfi Coast

The below blog is from our vacation last week. Brett was able to take time off and we headed out into Southern Italy. Monday morning we checked out of our apartment in Florence and headed south to Sienna. We spent half the day site seeing in Sienna. It’s a pretty old town where all the buildings are made from brick. It’s up on a hill so there is lots of up and down climbing, traffic is very limited within the town so we had to park our car outside and walk everywhere.

We saw the big Duomo and went inside. The interior was pretty impressive and very ornate.

The pillars were striped black and white marble, and there were carved heads of the popes looking down as you walked through. The vaulted ceiling was painted blue with gold stars.

We walked around the Palazzo Pubblico in front of the town hall with a huge bell tower, one of the biggest in Italy.

Then we drove to Assisi about 2 hrs from Florence, where we found our hotel for the night.

Assisi is another town with limited traffic and we had to drop off our bags at the hotel and then park the car and walk. We liked Assisi, it was a beautiful medieval town.

The Basilica di San Francesco is the main site to see here as it dominates Assisi.

Tuesday morning we walked around the town and walked through the Basilica. The Basilica was founded by St. Francis who started the order known as the Franciscan Monks. So people come from all over the world to see this church. He traded a life of power and riches for one of obedience, poverty, and chastity, and promoted peace and order. We saw the tomb of St. Francis on an altar in a stone box. They had a display of the tunic and slippers he wore during his last days. It was ironic that he had a very fine church for worship and yet very few personal possessions. We enjoyed walking through the church and the town. We stopped for lunch before we got on the road again at a cool looking restaurant but it turned out that it had the worst pizza we have ever had! We headed out on the road again for a 4.5 hr drive south to Sorrento and the Amalfi coast. We checked into our apartment for the 2 nights and settled in. The apartment was very nice as it ad a big terrace with a nice view of the ocean and the town. The only bad part was they had no heating in the house -- only little space heaters so it was quite cold!
Wednesday we woke up and got the first view of the ocean and the beautiful coastline. We took a very scenic drive along the Amalfi Coast. It was a narrow winding road along towns and cliffs that dropped into the ocean. We stopped and took lots of pictures and enjoyed the views of the coastline, cliffs, villages and the Mediterranean Sea.

Amalfi is the coast’s largest town. We walked out on the dock and enjoyed the views. I think we like the natural wonders and beauty more than all the churches and museums and man made structures. It was nice to be here during low season so there were not many tourists, we heard in the summertime this road along the Amalfi coast is packed with tourists. We had an enjoyable and relaxing day.