Lucca is one of those very fun discoveries that you sometimes make while traveling. Lucca is an old town that is surrounded by a huge wall that has a wide riding/walking trail on the top. Our Airbnb included two bikes to use and we made good use of them. The interior “old Town” is your classic Italian village filled with narrow cobblestone roads and passageways, easy to get lost in but the town is small and once you find the wall you can work your way back to your gate. Our apartment was close to the wall but in a very “locals” residential area. I researched the best local pizza parlor in town and it was less than a quarter mile from us! We found the local pizza parlor, Pizza Strapizzami, the place was mostly take-away, ( our version of take-out), and doing an incredible business with many people getting a hug from the cook in addition to their pizza, definitely local. We each ordered a regular size for about 7€ each, they were too big and really good, we had at least two more meals (breakfasts, better than granola-again), from the leftovers.
Lucca is only about 25 minutes from Pisa and it’s leaning tower, the main reason we were there. We bought the full ticket that let us into the many museums and chapels as well as the leaning tower. The tower is very fun and interesting as is the baptistry.
Our hotel in Florence, (Mulino de Firenze), was an old grain mill sitting alongside a wide river. The renovations were nicely done, leaving most of the building and “mill-works” in place yet creating beautiful rooms with a lot of character, we highly recommend it.
Florence is a beautiful city but does attract large crowds despite the sporadic rain that we were experiencing. In addition to the normal places of interest, I really wanted to see the Leonardo Di Vinci museum. It is small and focuses on his engineering more than his artwork that is well represented in the other famous museums. We had fun as it is educational as well as “hands-on” for many of his inventions and theories, I especially liked his ideas of manned flight.
Having had both good and “not-so-good” guides on previous tours, we happened upon the podcast downloads by Rick Steves. Although not as good as a good guide, his narration and insights are worth well more than the cost, (0.00€ – free!).
Needless to say, the Ufuzi Museum and it’s artwork are awesome and made better with a free podcast, the insights and opinions of the artwork and artists are amazing.
David. The David. MichaelAngelo’s David. The name of my brother, my uncle, my cousin and many friends. But this one was carved from marble, one piece of marble. His story is awesome, his creation is mind boggling, his presence needs to be witnessed to be fully appreciated.
The Accademia Gallery is a display of MichaelAngelo’s works, (and other artists), both completed and un-completed. It gives you a great feel for what it takes to make a awe-inspiring piece of artwork from a large chunk of rock. It is truly unbelievable to me, the patience and skill it took to create these works of art.
Florence was our last stop on this European tour. All we needed to do was drive to Rome, drop off the rental car and get our flight home. All went well except for the rental car drop off. Evidently, there were some some scratches on our rental car that supposedly were not there when we rented it…..so….. 450€ later we caught our flight home.
It’s good to be home and we can’t wait to see family and friends! See you soon!
Next stop: the RV 🇺🇸for 30 days….Los Osos, AG, Indio, Gilbert, Lo Lo Mai, Sedona, Salome, Ojai, Refugio, Jalama, Avila ???
Europe Detour 