I hope every­one had a lovely Easter.  Here in Lanciano, Easter is a pretty big deal with parades and march­ing bands going around the town nearly every­day since last Thursday. Chris cap­tured some amazing shots of the Easter parade this past Thursday.

We’ve been relax­ing in Lanciano with my good friend Cristina (who I call “Cris)  and her family. I met Cris when she was 13-years old and I was 16-years old. We hit it off from the very begin­ning. Some of you might recog­nize her because she was one of my brides­maids.  Her family runs the high school here, called Canadian College of Italy the Renaissance School, where I atten­ded grade 10, 11 and half of 12.

Here are a couple photos of this beau­ti­ful Italian town and the people I love.

The bell tower rings every 15-minutes. First it rings one tone of bell for what hour it is, then another tone lets you know if it is 15-after, 30-minutes or 45-minutes after the hour. To say the least, if you visit Lanciano be pre­pared to hear a lot of bells.

Since arriv­ing it has become a daily ritual for Chris and I to wake-up and head dir­ectly for the market or “mercato” in Italian, to satisfy our craving for caf­feine. A double espresso or cap­puccino usually does the trick.

We’ve also been helping out with odd tasks around the school and market. One of the first things we did was help Carla, Cris’s sister, dec­or­ate the market for Easter.

We even worked out our muscles and helped unload a van full of fresh produce the night before the weekly Wednesday market. I had no idea a crate of zucchini’s could be so heavy.

Of course after a workout like that we were all craving a well deserved drink so we headed back to the Allegria, the restaurant/hotel where the stu­dents eat lunch and dinner, which at one point also con­tained a wine bar for the public.

Filled with excite­ment and energy after a good nights rest, I wanted to show Chris the school.

After explor­ing the school for a bit, we met up with Cris, her boy­friend Dave and her sister Carla. Of course I had to get a shot of them in front of the school.

One evening Cris took us on a tour of the central town. Her tour focused primar­ily on churches and archi­tec­ture with its most excit­ing and well known topic being the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano. Seeing as the miracle is in a church I didn’t feel com­fort­able taking a photo, but the link provides excel­lent inform­a­tion on both Lanciano and the miracle. However, on the tour we did see some won­der­ful examples of modern day life and old architecture.

Lastly, I snapped a couple of photos while we were in Rome. Chris was doing a lot of street pho­to­graphy while we were there so I shot a few as well and a couple of the church that dis­plays a Michaelangelo sculpture.