Advertisement
Published: October 5th 2010
We travelled by train to Lucca which is a walled city north of Rome. It’s only tiny - about 800m by 1.2km and the perimeter is about 4km. Our apartment was big with 5 rooms and it overlooked Piazza Napoleone. This is really big and I could practise my soccer skills out there. I had to buy a ball so that I didn’t drive mum and dad crazy. They said I had cabin fever.
The wall of the city has a wide path where you can ride and walk. On the first day, we hired a bike with 4 wheels that was a bit like a car. We could all ride in it. It had 2 steering wheels but only one was attached to the steering. Mum went bolistic because nothing was happening when she was steering and she kept abusing Dad for driving too close to the middle. She eventually calmed down but was a little tense when I was driving. The views were amazing on both sides of the wall. The city is pretty flat so that riding is easy. We spent most our time wandering around the streets and laneways looking at the old buildings and riding.
I even found a group of Aussie kids to play soccer with.
We went to Pisa one day. It was pretty crowded so that we didn’t climb the tower. The Leaning Tower of Pisa is smaller and wider than I expected but is still amazing. There has been a lot work done to it so that it is stable. Apparently they started building it and then stopped for 100 years and then started again and then stopped for another 100 years. It started leaning because of the marble they used. Now it erodes faster because of the lean.
We found this great deli that sold the best tortellini. Mum cooked it at home and it was the best we’ve ever eaten. The food is great here. You’ve got to get to the shops at the right time because they shut for a couple of hours between 12noon and 4pm. There’s an unusual tower in Lucca that has trees growing out the top. We were going to climb it but it was shut for renovations.
Riomaggiore
This is the first town of Cinque Terre. The trip here was pretty tricky trying to find the right train platforms
and make sure you’re on the right train. Riomaggiore is a small town on the water’s edge but with stony beaches that are not great to swim in - I tried . It’s built into the cliffs and there are stairs and steep paths everywhere. We have just been travelling between the 5 towns. They are each a bit different. We like Riomaggiore the best. I love going down to the shops. I can order some things in Italian but a lot of the people speak English. The icecream is really nice and the bakery smells great. The shops are little but packed with lots of stuff so you have to be careful not to break anything. One of the shops says if you break it you pay for it and you clean it up.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 46; dbt: 0.04s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
