Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!  This will have to do in place of a holiday card.

I had wanted to spend our last day in Florence doing this bike tour that my friends Tera & Jake told me about, but I contacted several agencies and none were operating until the weekend.  Boo hoo!  So we went on a bus tour of the Chianti region instead.  This was still a lot of fun – we visited a couple of old towns before heading to the winery.  After probably five of our different tastings, Matt whispered “I think I’m getting drunk!!” so we’ve got to give some mad props to Jake & Tera for being able to bike back to Florence safely after that!  It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed the different wines from the region and learning about Chianti.

The bus stopped for a view over the Tuscan hills – it’s a bit misty though. This is all in the Chianti region.

The black rooster is the symbol of Chianti

Monteriggioni, one of the towns we visited

We packed up and headed to the small town of Assisi for Christmas Eve.  St Francis of Assisi is credited with giving us our modern day Christmas celebration, so I think we chose an excellent town for Christmas. We took a nice walk around town during the afternoon and toured the basilica and saw St Francis’ tomb as well.  Apparently he is Craig’s (Matt’s brother) confirmation saint – pretty cool!  We went to midnight mass – it was PACKED.  There were no taxis or buses running at 1:30am, so – fired up to run after both finishing Born to Run – we just hoofed it the mile or so back to our hotel in the middle of the night in a light drizzle.  It was actually a lot of fun and a great way to end the night.

A view of Assisi from below.  We stayed in a smaller town at the base of the hill that Assisi is situated on

Walking up to explore in the afternoon – I was pretty sweaty by the time we arrived at a little café for lunch

A nativity scene in the basilica

It’s Christmas Day now, so after raiding the hotel breakfast buffet, we’re on a train to Rome for a few more action packed days of sight seeing.  Eat some Christmas cookies for us!