Walking the Walls of Lucca

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Saturday 28th June
Met 8.30am for breakfast before the heat of the day! Many then headed down to the beach (about 20 minutes walk) before coming back for the 11.30 meeting/lunch. Today was Freddie's testimony (Belfast boy), before we had prayers and praise, topping it off with sitting around the books available from the bookshop for 15 minutes whilst people pointed out books that had been helpful to them. An experiment that seemed to work!

2.30pm we headed into Lucca - 30 minutes drive! 1 hour 15 minutes later we walking into Lucca... yes, the navigation didn't quite work today!! Gave ourselves just over 2 hours as we weren't sure what was here for us in Lucca - I'd read that the walls were the big attraction and was expecting Chester-style Roman walls, but it was more like an embankment with a road around it, so we soon headed into the city, which was beautiful to wander around (a lot of it is not easily accessible to traffic!). Found the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, built in the shape of the Roman Amphitheatre which once stood there, plenty of beautiful side-streets, some more photo opportunities on the walls (great for cycling around apparently), the Cathedral, Puccini's House (Lucca's most famous resident), plus a few refreshment stops!

Back at the campsite, we all had sandwiches so just headed down to the beach for a chance to watch the sun go down at sea. En route back, a few of us decided to stop for an extra bit of pizza... these were quite large, but we managed to finish them off... and no, I still don't have any voice!

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