DAY 98 TUESDAY JUNE 30 - GOODBYE LUCCA HELLO FLORENCE

At 9am we carried our luggage down the stairs and we were were met by Rugiada who wanted to know where we had been yesterday and whether we liked everything.  She drove us to the station in her Yaris and gave us a farewell hug, telling us she gets married in October.  We got the royal treatment in Lucca.

The train was second class only and we ended up with our bags between our legs and on our laps.  They were double deck carriages with inadequate luggage facilities.  A sporting team of teenagers made some noise, but their coach patrolled the aisle keeping them under control.

We had prepared a set of directions for our Hotel Bodoni but the train terminated at a different station so that was a waste of effort.  Florence S.M.N. station was a nightmare with people crowding and walking in all directions and no signs to a taxi rank.  We just kept walking to various exits until we saw a file of taxis in the distance near a small TAXI sign.  We queued up and a man in a yellow jacket was doing a good job of loading three or four taxis at a time from the queue.  Our driver guided his vehicle through narrow streets full of pedestrians and motor scooters and seemed to know how to choose his way with minimal delays.  We do not like big cities and Florence gave a first impression of sharing the usual negatives, including emergency sirens. But at least we got a taxi; in little towns we often can't find one easily.  It only cost 11euros for the ride and saved a lot of frustration.

Our hotel had a big sign outside, but it only had one floor of the four story building.  The top floor of course.  There is a lift which we used with our luggage, but we will be taking the 90 steps to aid fitness while we are here for three days.  At least the ceilings are flat and 3.6 meters high.  The room is small but adequate and the reception desk operates 24 /7 with helpful people. It was only 11:30am and we got straight into our room.

By 1pm we had cooled off in the air-conditioned room and set off to explore, using two different maps supplied at the desk.  We seemed to be the same as hundreds of others consulting maps and frequently we encountered groups of up to sixty people doing a tour.  After a bad experience in a Vegan Cafe near the hotel, we headed to the river, finding a Murano Glass shop along the way.  We sat on the steps of the huge San Croce church and admired the large river, Fiume Arno.  We walked along the bank to the famous Ponto Vecchio which our guide in Bath had mentioned, but crossing it was a disappointment as it housed wall to wall expensive jewellery shops.

The number of number scooters was incredible.

We passed an unusual statue of John the Baptist.

We were starting to feel the heat, so bought a huge gelato each and sat on the steps near the Uffizi Gallery listening to a busker making beautiful music on a guitar.

We checked out the statues and museums nearby and oriented ourselves for the next two days.  Can we avoid the crowds and expensive entry charges?

These two people were repairing a broken finger.

We had dinner in a good restaurant near San Croce. 

  Spaghetti Bolognese for Malcolm and Spaghetti Scoglio (seafood) for Lyn.  We are living on pasta, pizza and ice cream in Italy, which suits Malcolm's restricted diet but needs supplementing with plenty of fruit.

DAY 97 MONDAY JUNE 29 - LUCCA

We had our last breakfast on the Terrace today, facing the Serchio Valley.  A divine spot to start the day.  We laughed at the newcomers who leave their food on the table to go back to the buffet and find out that the naughty sparrows will attack any unattended plates.

We said goodbye again to Joe and Janet as they set off to see the Mediterranean beaches and paid our bill, which when added on to the original booking worked out at $220 per day.  We are very pleased with that for the luxury we lived in for the last week.

The reception ladies organised a taxi to Barga-Gallicano

 and it took only 50 minutes on the train to arrive in Lucca.  We arrived at our apartment building at 1:10pm and waited a few minutes to contact Rugiada, who showed us up to our third floor garret.  Plenty of steps to climb again.  Once again we have to duck our heads on the left side of the apartment.  Everything is very nice, with a kitchen and dining room and Rugiada left us bottles of wine, beer and water, plus a bag of chocolate biscuits.  She has arranged to drive us to the station tomorrow morning at 9am.

Rugiada made notes all over the town map she gave us, and we spent the afternoon following the leads she gave us.  The personal attention you get from the owners of these apartments makes up for the difficulty sometimes experienced in checking in compared to a hotel.

The old town is surrounded by two stone walls that are still intact and the layout with narrow lanes spreading in all directions is similar to Regensburg, and there are plenty of tourists thronging the streets.

We lost no time in visiting the Puccini House as this town was his birthplace.  It was a restoration of his home in the same style as the Goethe House in Frankfurt.  Pride of place was given to the Steinway Grand Piano which he used to write his music on. 

They even had the bed he was born in.

 There were original scores in his handwriting in glass cases and in drawers under the tables.  There was even a short film of Giacomo holidaying on a lake with his family.  He stole another man's wife and married her and smoked heavily, dying of laryngeal cancer at 66, but his genius is honoured everywhere in Lucca.   On one wall was a pastiche of the original cast and directors of the first performance of Madama Butterfly.

  We gained permission to climb up a very narrow staircase to yet another garret.  This room reproduced the one that Mimi occupied in La Boheme.

A final room had two costumes from the 1924 premiere of Turandot.

We had ice-cream from the Gelateria which works  like the new self-serve yoghurt shops and called that lunch. Then we walked up to the Roman Amphitheatre, which was full of cafes. 

  Dinner was at the Delicatezze with lots of bread and San Pellegrini water, which we cannot get enough of in this warm weather. 

At 7:15pm we were treated to a concert in the church of San Giovanni for 18 euros each. There was a tenor, a baritone and a pianist.  They performed arias and intermezzos from Mozart and Puccini.  In a word: Magnificent.

What a thrill to hear Italian music sung and played so enthusiastically by Italian artists in a large church of Italian marble; the notes reverberated for two or three seconds around us.

There is no room for trees in the crowded city but the Guinigi Tower that is almost next door to us has a few growing on the top.  We ran out of time to do the climb up to the top of this one.

The back of Pop's head is not as interesting as Nana's.

DAY 96 SUNDAY JUNE 28 - BARGA AGAIN

This morning there were people everywhere.  There was a wedding yesterday and most of those involved were at breakfast, along with new people for a "Gordon" conference this week.  The lobby seemed to be full of people either coming or leaving for most of the day.  We have only found two walking tracks here, so today we chose to walk to Barga again and this time use the correct path all the way.  It took us an hour each way and we had morning tea at the Alpino in Barga for half an hour.  On the way back we met a group of young Americans who were not sure of the way, so we gave them our page of instructions as we were now sure of the way.  The houses at Barga have a nice view of the mountains.

This deserted house was labelled unsafe, but it was for sale and would suit a major rebuild in the tradition of "Grand Designs".  Its size is massive.

We saw a big contingent of trail bikes in Barga and there were fresh wheel tracks on a narrow section of the path.  We met a local man walking with two sticks and pointed out to him that a few metres of the track had been cordoned off with a "Private Property" sign which discouraged us.  He laughed and said "Don't worry, this is Italy!  This track is very, very old."  The track is probably older than the houses that border it.

At Albiano there were thirty or more people at the open air swimming pool relaxing under fixed umbrellas.  We were quite hot so we stopped at the Terraces Restaurant nearby and bought an ice cream.

As we arrived back we bumped into Joe and Janet again and they told us they had been advised not to go to the Cinque Terre on a Sunday as it would be crowded. They will drive there tomorrow.  We chatted with them for an hour and Joe gave us some tips about glassware on Murano Island in Venice.

This afternoon was spent in our room relaxing, then we took the opportunity to dine in the Resort Restaurant for the last time.

DAY 95 SATURDAY JUNE 27 - BAGNI DI LUCCA

Thanks again to Janet and Joe Lenzo we were able to visit another village not too far from our resort.  It was a place where a lot of English people used to come to "take the waters" and bathe, so there is an English Church and an English Cemetery here still.  The first thing we found was a small market in the town square.  One stall had a large variety of local fruit and vegetables for sale, another one had every possible kitchen utensil you could think of, and a third had lovely clothes at very reasonable prices with "made in Italy" tags.  Lyn was sorely tempted, but decided to get a cup of coffee while she decided whether to spend.  We bought a cappuccino, a glass of milk, a fruit flan and a pastry.  The bill was 3.90 Euros ($5.50).  No wonder people sit at tables in a little cafe for ages. Back at the market we bought a bag of hot chips and a quarter of a rabbit, which Malcolm ate greedily ($9 total).

In the park there was a miniature free book exchange for English readers.

And a fountain with bathing lady symbolic of the town's history.

There was also a large tower which we cannot explain because the sign was only in Italian.

We stopped at Barga on the way back for diesel for the Fiat 500G (a compact car much bigger than the earlier namesake).

We went to the resident Pizza Restaurant for dinner and took a photo of Barga from our balcony as the sun set.

We are in the Serchio Valley, surrounded by the Appenine Mountains.

There was a wedding reception in the resort tonight and we watched the fireworks display from our balcony.  The noise echoed back from the mountains.  The moon overhead was at half phase and Jupiter was approaching Venus.

DAY 94 FRIDAY JUNE 26 - A CAR TRIP

We had no plan for today so we had a late breakfast and when we finished we had a chat with Janet and Joe Lenzo, an Australian couple from Melbourne that we met at the cooking class on Tuesday.  This is the certificate we all received for our effort.

They were planning to drive to the town of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana to find a unique restaurant called the "Old Mill" in Italian.  They kindly invited us to join them so we met them in the lobby at 11:30 and they used their Tom Tom to locate the town.  Joe found a parking spot in the centre of town and we took off in separate directions to look around.  It was the first restaurant we came to.  The church and the tower were a feature of the town as usual.

Not long after we bumped into Janet and Joe again so we found our way back to the Vecchio Moulino and ordered lunch using signs and simple words: cheese, meat, salad.  We sat at a large table and received the usual big basket of bread varieties.  They placed three huge boards before us with a wide selection of cold meat and cheese and a tomato salad.  We struggled to do justice to the amount of food but we downed about three quarters of it and the manager told us that all the food was sourced locally.  It was an enjoyable and educational meal.  No dinner for us tonight.

In France we found food shops of many types ending in -iere.  In Italy the ending is -eria.

DAY 93 THURSDAY JUNE 25 - BARGA

After looking across the valley at the village of Barga for three days we succeeded today in walking there and back and found it to be a delightful place.

We felt sure our "guide dog" would turn up and show us the way but there was no sign of him and we really needed his help.  After twenty minutes walking through the forest we arrived at the tiny settlement of Albiano, which has a cafe called the Terraces.

We followed the instruction sheet prepared by the resort up to the point where we turned around on Tuesday but soon found a sign "Private Property" which persuaded us to come down the main road, but we found the track again not long after.  We arrived after a total of one hour walking.  There were family vaults and Madonna shrines along the way.

We headed straight towards the old part of town, which was up a steep hill that had dozens of narrow alleys and step ways leading to the Duomo.

  At the church of St Christopher located at the base of the final steps up to the Duomo, we heard a small orchestra tuning up and when we came back we were able to record 30 seconds of their playing, which was probably from Handel's opera Catina which was due to commence tomorrow.

The Duomo was impressive for such a small town and featured a statue of the saint from the twelfth century.

  

From the grounds of the cathedral we had a great view of the valley and we could see the Il Ciocco resort (the large building).  Our room is the last balcony on the right under the roof.  Possibly the one with the best view.

We had morning tea at a cafe nearby and it consisted of a cappuccino, a hot milk and a slice of almond tart.  They charged us four euros 20 and we said that could not be right so they checked the bill and said yes it is, so we left one euro on the table. 

We rambled around for another hour, passing through Garibaldi Square where this plaque seemed to indicate that one of Garibaldi's close associates was being honoured on the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of his birth. 

 We are still not sure whether the statue in the square was actually Garibaldi.

We found a high section of the original town wall.

In a shop window there were several model houses and this one was made with short logs and reminded us of the cordwood walls of our house.

All the services seem to be catered for in this town, including physiotherapy.

We bumped into our Chef from last night's class,  Alessandro Manfredini, nearby and he told us he was going to a job interview.  Tonight at dinner he came out to talk to us again and told us he was sad because he was not successful.  He treated us like old friends and gave us special attention.  We were honoured.  

After an ice cream, we walked back to the resort, trying another way, but we still missed the correct path at halfway.  Still no guide dog; we hope he is all right as his eyes looked really bad.

There are many houses for sale, some in poor repair, that would be a real building challenge; but you would end up with a very unique and large home.

DAY 92 WEDNESDAY JUNE 24 - RENAISSANCE

We just enjoyed being in the resort today as Malcolm's ankle was sore and we did not want to risk a long walk.

We explored the indoor swimming pool and the Termarium, which proved to be a sauna that offered "emotional showers".  Nothing to do with bunga bunga probably.  The games room had snooker,  table soccer and table tennis.  The Reception Area has a Yamaha grand piano that nobody ever plays and the library lounge is good for us to browse picture books on Tuscany.  We did some shopping in the unfrequented resort shops and counted the steps up to our room (number 938).  There are 180.

We thought the sign on all the pot plants was clever.

Here is today's picture of the valley and mountains.

The small area of white on the top of the mountain at the left turns out not to be snow.  It is cloud. There is a hole in the mountain top with a stone bridge above and you can see the cloud on the other side of the mountain.

Marble is used everywhere here.  For tiles on the bathroom walls and floor, for steps and stairs, for seats and pillars on railway stations.  Many walkways are covered with crushed marble.

DAY 91 TUESDAY JUNE 23 - WE MEET A NEARLY BLIND GUIDE DOG

There is a conference taking place here and breakfast was a bit hectic as the participants had to be finished by 8:30 for the start of meetings.  The place suddenly became quiet and we took our time to fill up on the free food.  No lunch today.  

Last night we found a rough track heading away from the resort, so we set off straight after breakfast to explore. It was overgrown at first but improved and after 500 meters we met a young couple with a baby returning to the resort, followed by a nearly blind dog.  They told us that this was a short cut to the nearest town of Barga. The dog turned around and walked in front of us, looking back every so often to ensure we were following.  When there was a fork he would wait until we reached it and then continue.  It was a case of the physically blind leading the mentally blind.  We covered about a third of the way then decided to turn back and do the full hike later in the week.  He took charge again and made sure we took no wrong turns on the way back.  The reception lady at the resort told us he is an institution on the track.  We passed through forests with little creeks like this one.

In the afternoon we located the track that leads up the hill to a settlement called Treppignana.  It took us about two hours for the return trip.  We had to dodge blackberry branches for the first part in the forest.  We passed derelict buildings.

As we climbed we had views of the valley in other directions.

When we reached the traffic road that took us up to the town we met a group of about twenty five English ramblers heading down, which demonstrated that people pay money to come here and do walks.  There was a very authentic feel about these tiny villages, this one having no shops.

There was a church of course, with a tower.

And on the way back we recorded this shrine.

At 4pm we kept our appointment for our free Italian Cooking Class. The chef was very friendly and quite unflappable.  He had everything set out for us and started in true local fashion by pouring wine (or water) for everyone.  There were eight of us, all Australian, and he had set out a little pile of flour for each of us and we had to pour some olive oil and three eggs into it and knead a wad of pasta.  Lyn and Malcolm were given the task of making the meat sauce from the ingredients he had prepared.  This was used for the lasagne and the fettucine.  Others made gnocchi, ravioli and tagliatelli.  We took turns to stir the pot.

After two hours of busy work we were photoed with our creations.

The waitress took us to a party table for eight while the chef did the baking and boiling.  We were presented with a large plate with a sample of the five different dishes we had produced from raw ingredients.

With the beautiful outlook over the valley behind us, we enjoyed the meal and the conversation immensely.

For dessert the chef prepared a fruit flan featuring more of the delicious pineapple they import from Queensland.

One of the ladies was called Vanessa and resided in Singapore at the moment, so we told her to seek out her namesake if she needed physiotherapy.  When the conversation turned to energy they turned out to be all very keen on renewables.  The couple from South Australia told us their Premier announced a target to be carbon neutral by 2030.  We spent no money today and had a really good time.