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Published: October 16th 2010
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We awoke the next morning and enjoyed a fabulous breakfast at the B&B - egg, cheese, meats, buns, fruit, all delivered in the breakfast room by a charming Italian “mamma” who you could tell just loved her life and loved serving breakfast to her guests.
We planned to spend the morning in Lucca, so we started walking around some more.. We played a game trying to find a street without a single bike on it - alas, we failed. There were bikes everywhere. We even saw the mail being delivered by bike! We explored the Duomo, saw the Tomb of Ilyria del Caretto, and visited the ruins under the church of San Giovanni. We spent an hour in the Museo della Cattedrale, where we saw a gorgeous golden cruicifix and several other unique items. We hit the small but cute Botanical Gardens, adjacent to Lucca’s walls, where we saw fish and flowers an all sorts of plants By two we pretty much felt like we had seen Lucca, so we grabbed some sandwiches and pastries and beer in a café near our B&B, grabbed our knapsacks and headed to the train station.
Getting to San Giminano wasn’t nearly as
long or as complicated as I had anticipated (it was less complicated than getting to Lucca!). One train to Poggisboni, one bus, and we were there.
It struck us immediately that San Giminano was a worthwhile stop. It is an adorable little town - everything is old, and its like walking into five hundred years ago. It reminded me of a medieval castle play set or lego kit, with the bricks and the walls and the little squares. Only the tourist shops dulled the illusion that you have traveled back in time.
We walked to our hotel, the Cisterna. This was our “splurge” hotel, the most expensive of the trip, and I had paid extra for the views over the Tuscan countryside. It was right off the square, simple to find, and walking in, it just felt like walking into a five star hotel.
I had pretty thoroughly researched all of our accommodations, and thought I knew everything about each spot. Thus far I had not been surprised by anything. But when I walked into that room in San Giminano I was immediately pleasantly surprised: “A Bathtub!” I practically screamed it.
Never mind the view. Never
mind the plans to eat at the posh hotel restaurant. I sent Sam off to get me a bottle of wine and got into that tub. I spent about two hours in there, washing off the grime of twenty-four days of travel. At the end of that two hours my feet - the heels of which had been black since Rome despite daily foot-washings - were clean, cleaner than they’d been in three weeks.
We wandered to a little meat and cheese shop nearby, and got excellent service, with the young man behind the counter giving us samples and explaining where all the meat came from, what the differences were. We brought buffalo cheese and buffalo sausage, and an odd but delicious type of cake, Panne Forte - we got both chocolate and fruit varieties. We took it all back to our balcony and ate it watching the sun set over Tuscany.
Some time after dark, in the distance, fireworks started. They were so far away that they looked like tiny little explosions of light, their flare no bigger than a fully blown balloon.It was the oddest thing to see; like watching fireworks in miniature. We couldn’t hear
them, but could clearly see each colour flare up and explode. Another adorable surprise from our splurge hotel.
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