Saturday, 29 December

Fine

 Rome to Sorrento

At half past nine in the morning, Sun Fo and his wife, Baoqiao, Jinkun (were all in the same car), while Zhang, Kitty and Zhongxiong were in my car.  We left Rome. We drove along the mountain road via St. Lessareo. At half past eleven we arrived at Frosinone. We had morning tea in a café in a small hotel for fifteen minutes, then we continued our journey. We passed through Arce. At twelve ten we arrived at Cassino. We drove along the mountain road towards the summit for 5.5 miles to the Abbey of Monte Cassino. This was one of most renowned monasteries for Catholicism. It was built by St. Benedict, and his sister St. Scholastica, in A.D.529. During this war, it was completely destroyed, only the tombs of the two saints were not bombarded. The church found it was miracle. Originally the Allied army did not want to destroy it, but the German army took it as stronghold and the sacrifice of the Allied Army was too big, therefore the latter decided to bombard it. But even for occupying this point the more than 100,000 people died for the Allied Army. We went to visit this monastery and found that it was now under rebuilding. The tombs of the two saints still remained. I took several photos. At one forty-five we returned to the lower part of the mountain. We had lunch at the dining hall of the Excelsior Hotel. The food was fine and it was not expensive. We carried on our journey at three and we got to Sorrento and checked in to the Excelsior Grand Hotel Vittoria. I stayed in Room 21. Baoqiao said that it should be his turn to treat us, therefore he suggested finding a better restaurant. But Sun Fo lost his temper, saying he was already very tired, which was really unreasonable. We could only listen to him and had dinner at the hotel. After dinner, we all felt tired so returned to our rooms to take an early night.