Santa Maria degli Angeli

Today K2 (the inseparable Kayla & Kelcey) and I took the bus down into the valley to Santa Maria degli Angeli, the town directly below Assisi. This is where the actual industry and residential population of Assisi lives, because it’s virtually impossible to expand immediately outside the city walls. The town includes such practical things as grocery stores, gas stations, schools, and the train station, which simply don’t have room in Assisi proper. Santa Maria does have its own namesake attraction as well, however: the Basilica di Santa Maria. This basilica, in sheer size, puts the one of St. Francis to shame. The centerpiece of the basilica is the small church that St. Francis restored and started his order of monks in- the little stone church sits dwarfed in the center room of the basilica, as if it were carefully plucked from its original foundation and housed in this huge shell for safekeeping. Next to it is the Transito, an even smaller stone infirmary hut, this one looking more like the huge building was built around it as it sat there immovable.  This was where St. Francis himself died, and it is now surrounded by red velvet ropes that are ignored by the tourists pressing in, peering through the door and trying to take undercover photos with their cell phones or pocket cameras (use of both is forbidden in the basilica). I try to be respectful as I walk around the huge rooms and past the small stone buildings, as there are just as many praying nuns and pilgrims here as there were at St. Francis’. Here, however, there are wads of tour group taking up the main walkways, congealing around the most impressive frescoes, talking in loud multilingual whispers. As a group, they don’t seem to watch where they are going, and if you don’t get out of their way, you will be bumped and jostled along with them, and probably forced to take someone’s picture. The nuns simply ignore the tour groups, and the tour groups seem to be afraid of the nuns, so it’s as if they live in separate levels of the same reality- watching a nun walk through a tour group is like watching the red sea part.

The high point of my day was lunch- you’d never guess it, since the three of us had about €10 between us, but we spent it oh so well.  We went to a grocery store and came out with a loaf of yesterday’s ciabatta (€1.07), a container of fresh mozzarella balls (€2.29), a package of salami (€3), and best of all, a small cup of pesto (€2.38). We found a nice bench big enough for the food and all of us to sit on, and laid out a picnic. We finished all the food, feeling pleasantly stuffed by the last bites. Everything went together perfectly. I have been craving more pesto ever since.