Peregrinatio Vitae: And now for something completely different!

A friend from Germany came down to visit us for a week, so we filled it up with one adventure after another. It was very interesting that the visit was planned as a surprise for a mutual friend, and I was equally surprised. For me, the surprise came as I was in the chapel at school for my hour as Guardian of the Blessed Sacrament. I had just finished my hour and was thinking of lingering a moment or two before the altar and under the window, when I heard a familiar German accent walk by. To confirm the impression that that was really her voice, I heard the voice of an American who belonged there and who is another mutual friend. So, I left and followed the voices down the hall to greet her, and they asked if I'd join them for a trip on Saturday. We decided to go visit Roccasecca and Monte Cassino. And we met up at the train station Saturday morning, and I discovered that instead of four of us, 7 were going. And we got off first at Roccasecca (where I wanted to go see the castle where St. Thomas Aquinas was purportedly born). And there was a street market blocking bus access.

But I enjoyed seeing the marked as we passed through to wait at a bus stop on the other side. And we waited, and waited, and waited.

Eventually, after an hour, a bus came and took us to the foot of a hill which we climbed in search of the castle.

Along the way, we passed a shrine in honor of Our Lady of Lourdes, and then we went up...

You might not see the sign here well enough to know it says in Italian, "Castle Inn," so we thought we must be getting close at that point...

But, this didn't look much like a castle. We did have a good view below, though--back whence we came not so many minutes ago!

A sign that we were getting closer?

We got to a boardwalk, with a sign mentioning the Castle of the Counts of Aquino. But, by then, some of us were tired. So, some continued, while others sat down for a rest, with umbrellas to protect them from the sun.