Day 8 - 7th May 2003 - Urbino

This afternoon around 18 of us piled into a little bus, the kind of bus you usually see at the bottom of a steep ravine on the 6 o clock news and headed off for a few hours in Urbino with a few stops along the way ... the first of which being .. you guessed it... a ravine.

The river Metauro that slowly winds its way around Urbania combines itself with several other rivers in the area and has forged a valley in the vicinity of Urbino. Steep cliff faces of various coloured stones rise suddenly up from the river forming a cathedral of stone, at the opening of this fiorgo a small church stands we piled out of our bus and into it's cold dark space with the sounds of kids playing a rather energetic game of soccer at a park directly opposite bouncing off the walls, again the clash of the ancient and the utterly modern is everywhere. The slab in the chamber below the pulpit was cold, i lay down for a few seconds when nobody in the group was watching.... somebody had carved "Juve Merda" on the stone above my head.

During the afternoon we had the opportunity to spend a great deal more time in Urbino, once again the youthful effervescence of the town during school days is its most prominent feature but we had time to walk some of its ridiculously steeply sloped streets.

It was only recently that cricket jumpers became all the rage in Europe, one of the sports clothing stores in urbino still had a good range to choose from... my favourite were the mockups of rugby league jumpers,.. with my favourite slogan being ''The frontier spirit of the australia'' the 25 euro price tage took it beyond the souvenir bracket but i had a good laugh at the shopkeeper's expense,.. which is good as it is usually the otherway around.