It’s been a while since our last update (my bad) so get
ready for a bumper edition. Also i'll put in my apologies now for the title pun (all will become clear).
Friday
After a few cooler overcast days the sun was back again, and
we’d heard nothing but good things about a nearby medieval walled city called
Lucca so we decided to go check it out.
Although first that meant getting on the sauna train, now
the windows do open, I know I opened all of them on the way here last week. But
apparently most Italian people (who were already sat down by all the windows)
prefer to just slowly cook on their way into town.
Anyway we made it into Lucca, and as soon as you leave the
station you can see the 30ft high walls of the old city, and a handful of the
old towers dominating the skyline from inside.
We decided against following the designated tourist route
and forged our own path through the maze-like grid of narrow ancient streets
and alleyways finding our way from one piazza to the next.
The first one we came out onto contained the impressive Duomo
di San Martino. I think my favourite sight of the town was the Torre Guinigi, a
fortified tower some 7-8 stories high with fully grown Oak trees on top. Needless
to say we climbed to the top to take a look.
On the way back down I spotted this reprobate who had been
locked away in the tower.
All this exploring is thirsty work, so next we headed for a
coffee in the Piazza that used to be the old amphitheatre. While there we
noticed wine was only 2 euros so stayed for some wine too, also I tried out an
espresso/brandy combination (like a civilised version of the dead Mexican).
Back in Bagni di Lucca we went for dinner at Ristorante del
Sorno, whose reputation for having the ‘best pizza in Italy’ was too much to resist,
and while we’re still some way off having done an exhaustive survey, so far we
have to agree.
Becki was not however very impressed with the service, as to start the
waitress flung basket of dry brown bread down on the table without even saying a
word. On the bright side though glasses of Prosecco only 2.50!
On the way back it dawned on us there was a very real risk
we were going to run out of petrol, and a 12k walk up the mountainside in the
pitch black wasn’t exactly how we’d planned to end the day. We drove slow and
steady but on the steeper parts of the hill the little panda slowed right down
to……lets just say ‘walking pace’ would be very generous.
The Weekend
We decided to have a relaxing couple of days in and around Crasciana,
only venturing down to the fig trees at the edge of the village for a free
lunch! On Sunday evening I set off for a run through the woods. A few miles in
I startled a deer that was grazing in my path, and there was also some amazing scenery
along the way especially as the sun was starting to set, although this did also
make me realise it was probably time to head back before I ran out of light.
Back at the house we decide to give the coffee percolator we
discovered a go, neither of us had used one before but how hard could it be?
That attitude was probably a mistake…See we’d figured we would work our 5 hours
allocated for Monday spread out over the weekend, so we could take Monday off,
get up early and go to Florence. That
went out the window shortly after drinking a whole mug full of what was
basically espresso and subsequently still being awake at 5am.
Monday – Thursday
After finally getting to sleep just as the sun was rising
and the resulting lie in, we had missed the early train we needed to get so got
back to the business of making shelves. After the fun of sawing and sanding by
hand we had hoped the drilling part would be easier, but no such luck, with no
masonry drill or nail, 48 holes in a brick wall to make was again slow
progress. But by Thursday afternoon our (entirely handmade) shelves were finally
complete……about time too!
One more highlight of the week, on Wednesday night we had a
go at making our own pizza’s from scratch. We’re not quite giving ‘del Sorno’ a
run for their money yet, but in our own little contest the verdict was: Becki’s
definitely looked the best but mine scored more points in the taste test.
No comments:
Post a Comment