Bagni di Lucca and area

Friday February 17

Can’t believe a week has gone by already since we left home.  Quite a difference in snowfall since we left, looks like the entire Maritimes is now white!

Quizz time, How do you package 16 rolls of toilet paper in the same space we put 12 at home in Canada?

Squish them like He double hockey sticks

More on bathrooms. As I mentioned before I consider us quite well travelled but another new one regarding bathrooms in Italy.  Yes they have sinks to wash your hands, but it took us both a minute to figure out how to get water out of the faucet.  Not taps to turn, no motion detector, but if you look on the floor there is a pedal that you step on to release the water.  Not like this in our apartment, but I've seen this in a wine bar now, and the restaurant today.

This morning I worked, then took the afternoon off to start the week-end with a little tour.  Andre saw yesterday that there is a place that he can take the garbage to sort it, normally you can put the garbage out every day except Sunday, but it is specific things each day, 4 different specific things.  So, he is smarter than that and just walks down the street to where there are bins, problem is you need a key to get into the bins.  So back he comes with all the garbage.  I guess next week we will be better at getting the garbage out on the correct days.

We leave at noon to go and pick up the car rental. Andre had been warned yesterday that the guy was leaving the shop at 1 because he had plans for the week-end.  It is a 25 minute walk to get there from our apartment, so to be safe we left at noon.  We have a very cute little Smart Car, with only about 500 km on it, I better be careful driving it!

Our tour this afternoon started with a 30 minute drive to the town of Bagni di Lucca to find a restaurant that we had seen recommended on trip advisor a few times.  The restaurant was Antico Caffè Del Sonno, they have a 10 Euro menu for lunch during the week which was fantastic.  Andre took lots of pictures (of course) so I won’t go into details here.

Vino for the Co-Pilot Andre

Gnocchi and regional soup to start with followed by Osso Bucco & Wood Oven Baked Chicken

Cooking Wendy's chicken

One of the displays holding a large collection of miniature liquor bottles

Owner (we presume) telling Wendy about all the villages around Bagni Di Lucca

Pedestrian Bridge across the street from the restaurant

It has now started to rain out a little, but not nearly as bad as what was in the forecast.  Andre had read about these castle ruins Rocca di Lucchio that had a beautiful view that he wanted to go see.  He did warn me about the single track switch back road, I’m glad it’s done now.  On the way up we pulled onto the side for pictures and what looked like a delivery truck zoomed by.  We met him on his way down when we were near the top, I started to back up to let him by, but he quickly decided I was a lost cause on the mountain road and backed up his van.  On the way down I really lucked out as a local was heading out and I was able to follow him the whole way down.  It would have taken twice as long if I was leading!  Absolutely gorgeous views, too bad the weather wasn’t a bit better, but like I said it was much better than what was in the forecast originally.

Quarry when you first turn off the main road

Lucchio

The castle ruins are in the trees above the village

 At the very entrance to the town there are homes with parking spots, besides that it is a totally pedestrian town. I think we saw a total of 6 cars up here. Many of the homes seem to be abandoned now, but a few definitely were still inhabited. We did come across one elderly couple when we first entered the town.  They definitely did not speak any English, but so cute.  He had a basket type thing attached to his back carrying wood supplies and was heading out of town towards the mountain on foot.  Andre missed a great photo op here.

Downtown Lucchio

Wendy hoping  she could be like Perter Pan and fly down from here to the car

The view is supposed to be fabulous

The inside of one of the abandon houses

We made our way back to Lucca after this.  We had hoped to visit Barga as well but knew we would run out of daylight.  A stop to take some pictures of the Devils Bridge and pick up some honey at a little shop right across from the bridge.

We are now safely back in Lucca.  Only got honked at once, mixed up with directions a few times, and we are still talking, kinda.  Tomorrow should be fun.  We are starting out early and going to stay overnight, then come back here on Sunday. 

Leftover minestrone soup for supper with a good bottle of Chianti red wine, Then Andre and I worked on the blog as there will probably not be much time on Sat & Sun to do complete it and post. Off for a walk to check out a seafood restaurant that I saw on TripAdvisor and get a bit of fresh air and exercise.  Did not find the restaurant, will have to look again.

Spent the rest of the evening planning for the weekend, putting locations in the GPS and writing down a couple of things we want to see.