A Place To Read A Book And Write A Letter: Assisi

I have found that people come to Italy for many different reasons: the architecture, the fashion, the wine, the lawlessness, et cetera, et cetera. (are you supposed to use two et cetera's?). I can only look at architecture so long before I realize it's all the same; I've never been one for fashion and I'm not yet one for wine, and although I do enjoy a good, no-holds brawl time and again, I have not yet really capitalized on the unpatroled dark side streets.

I have read a lot. And I have written a whole lot of letters. So I suppose that the reason I came to Italy was to find a pretty place to read a book and write a letter (I actually came to study, but, you know, et cetera, et cetera). And so this weekend I began my research.

Virginia, Emily, and I left Perugia for Assisi on Friday. Assisi is a small town built on a hill, most famous for spawning some sort of animal rights activist for all I can tell; I can't read latin. But I can tell you that if that was what my town was famous for, I wouldn't advertise it.

None of the streets go straight. They all double back, making little headway against the elevation. We took a bus all the way to the top, and then (in all seriousness) we illegally entered the ruins of a castle and I scaled one of the ramparts. Then I ripped my shirt and answered the Call of the Wild. And only one part of that story is true. Which? YOU decide.

From the illegally entered ruins we could see the whole town: it's all made out of the same white and pink stone, which makes it look like one big Franciscan compound. A deep fog rolled in from my right (that's the best I can do, in terms of cardinal directions), like a high tide. The city looks like what Perugia used to: clean, green, and open. No graffiti, et cetera, et cetera.

Going down is easy: the streets are all sloped. The hard part is figuring where you are, as all these streets are lined with multi-use buildings, and covered in the type of fog that causes shipwrecks. It all added to the ambiance, I think. Or at least it added to my definition of ambiance, because I'm still not sure what it is, exactly.

Overall, I award it 1300 moose, which is David Fish's equivalent of a gold star. And I operate on the David Fish standard.