Signtseeing with Marc & Mary-Sue

This morning I am going to Pisa with Marc & Mary-Sue to pick up the car they rented for the rest of the week. After a quick breakfast of non-champions (no wine like the Bologna food tour), we pack up for the day. Wendy walked with us to the train station as she is working and not coming with us today.

We took the 8 o'clock train to Pisa where we connected with the Pisa airport bus. The train ticket included both the train and the bus on the same ticket. At the airport we walked to the car rental area which is about 500-600 meters or so from the airport. The rented a mid-size as they got a great deal on it. They gave them a Nissan Cactus. A very nice car and it is fully loaded with built in GPS, Backup video screens and 360 sensor to warn you when you are getting close to hitting things when parking. Even a sunroof but you can not open it. Nice enough that I would consider buying it in Canada but I don't think we could fit 2 sets of clubs in the trunk.

The man at the airport said we should do the beach town of Castiglincello instead of Liverno which is more like a big city like Moncton. So we plug this destination into the GPS. I don't know what people did it before GPS. They are great, turn here turn there ... GPS says it is only a 20 minutes drive there, perfect.

Along the way we spot at small village with a castle on top. We had planned to stop for croissants and cappuccino anyway, so perfect. We park the car at the bottom of the hill and walk up to the top. Unfortunately neither the Castle or the church is open at this time of the day or the year. Not sure if the castle is ever open or not. It is very nice and has 2 beautiful towers that you can see from outside of it. The views are also lovely from here. You can see for miles around with mostly forested hills. We walk back down and go for our caffeine break. A very local place. 3 older gentlemen were have Spritz outside so we sat at the table next to them. They were having a great time. Must be a regular thing for them as it looks like this was the only place in town to do anything. I am sure they talked about us after we left as we were the only non-local there. It was a bar/coffee shop/video gaming/newspaper stand kinda place. Either way thing were very inexpensive and the cappuccino and pastry were excellent. Back to the parking lot, we try to find out what the name of the town was with a store owner after our bartender/waiter could not tell us either. She did not understand us either.  Search on the map and finally found out we were in Nozzano Castello

Mimosa trees

  Leaving Nozzano Castello we came across a shepherd with his goats

Back on the road and we are only 5 minutes away, great. We follow the GPS and a couple of minutes it says turn left and 10 seconds later it says you have arrived at your destination. What we had plugged in was the name of the beach which the man had circled at the airport. But the GPS went to the town with that name. Now I know what people did when they did not have GPS. They paid attention to where they were and where they were going. Either way, it was a fun detour. The only problem was that we went in the wrong direction and were now closer to Lucca than where we wanted to go. We plugged in the name of the beach town and drove thru Pisa again to get there. This time we found it no problem. We stopped at one place to take in the ocean view. This town is like ST Andrews NB or Old Orchard beach Maine where everything is just about closed in the winter. Lots of green space with mature trees to walk around. The wind was blowing hard and there were huge waves. We then walked around the residential/hotel section of the town. None of the places were open but there were some lovely looking hotels. It started to rain so we decided to head back to the car and drive around hoping to find a place that might be open

White wall tires.  Check out the hand brakes as well

We saw a bar that looked open so we were able to park nearby and go see. It was one of those all in one places again. Bar/coffee shop/ snack bar with 4 tables and a back area bar lounge/gaming machine place. We each got a sandwich. Mary-Sue and I got a glass of wine. A bag of chips, 2 cappuccino, 2 pastries and the bill came to 18 euro. Pretty good deal as the bartender evened open a fresh bottle of wine for us.

I saw of my map of Tuscany that there was a nice drive in the hills nearby. I asked our bartender/waiter friend if it was good and he said yes. He spoke pretty good English. The rain as now stopped and we hope it stays like this for our scenic mountain drive. In about 15 minutes we were at the start of where we wanted to be. I had punched Riperbella and this time it was the right location. It turns out to be a great drive we go up and up for half of it and then down and down for the second half. These hills are dotted with vineyards and olive trees groves. We stop at one location at one of the highest points to take in the views and the scenery.

We decide to get the toll highway home as it was now 3:30 and the back road would probably take almost 2 hours to get home. At about 10 km from Lucca, we saw signs to merge into 1 lane. When we got to about 200 feet from passing the problem area, the traffic stopped completely. We were at a standstill for at least 20 minutes. We also hit some rain at this point. I guess we may as well have taken the backroads home but this was easier for Marc to drive. After the crane removed whatever the problem was, it was a quick ride home. We stopped for groceries which I had forgotten that Wendy had told me to pick up salad stuff. On top of that it rained all day here in Lucca, so poor Wendy was stuck indoors all day. She was starting to get cabin fewer by the time we got here. More flowers in the near future I guess.

We cooked the lasagna that I had made last week and had frozen it. It turned out to be delicious. We had some grappa that we got at the grocery store before supper and a nice bottle of red wine with the meal.

  

After supper the rain had cleared up, Wendy and I went to a quick pace walk into town and as we were getting closer to the apartment it was stating to rain again. Marc and Mary-Sue were tired and stayed behind. We did not stop much since they got here in Italy. They looked at where we may go tomorrow instead of coming with us.