Rachel in Paris: La Dolce Vita

Italy is beautiful. Like jaw-droppingly, let's-never-go-back-home kind of beautiful. Hardly anything beats the kind of happy you feel waking up in Italy with a foamy cappuccino and the sound of birds chirping outside. Just thinking about it brightens up the drizzly, gloomy weather we've been having in Minneapolis this week.

My first visit to Italy was in May 2011 when I studied abroad with one of my best friends, Amanda, and thirteen others on Augsburg's "Art and Spiritual Practice in Italy" trip for eighteen days, where we learned plein air sketching and about the lives of St. Francis and St. Clare. In Siena, we sunbathed in the Piazza del Campo and enjoyed getting lost in the medieval architecture. We then took on the Apennines mountain range, trekking for three days through the Parco Nazionale delle Foreste Casentinesi on a pilgrimage following St. Francis' steps to his retreat at La Verna, atop Monte Penna. None of us believed our professors when they told us we should train for it, so it turned into a brutal three days, particularly when we had to wear garbage bags during the downpour and thunder on our second full day. This was a full-on shower-like rain, so when we stopped to eat our soaked prosciutto sandwiches, we were so miserable that no one spoke. I think half of us just threw our sandwiches in the trees. Despite being the most physically challenging thing I've ever done, I now have a real love for hiking and would love to go back and do it all over again. We then traveled to Assisi, a small village on Monte Subasio in Umbria, which had beautiful churches and scenery and finished up in awe of the splendor of Rome.

I can't wait to see more of Italy someday, like Sicily, Lake Como and the Cinque Terre and revisit the small towns of Tuscany and Umbria, because not much beats the sunshine, wine and pasta of Italy.

Rachel