Blogs from Tuscany, Italy, Europe - page 2

Today is a non travel day, but we still needed to get out to explore the local towns. In the next town over, Montecatini Terme, we found a park with a local url=https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g194830-d12815927-Reviews-Parco_delle_Terme_di_Montecatini-Montecatini_Terme_Province_of_Pistoia_Tuscany.htmlMuseum, cafe and an original private house turned spa. While the museum charged, the original spa and parking is free. They also has 4 sets of taps from 4 natural water sources, all with varying tastes and temperatures. The cost for glasses of water with doctors prescription was €18, however n ot knowing this at the time I tried each with my palm cup. Doh! After the lovely walk around the park and museum, we picked a local restaurant for lunch. url=https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g194830-d2006122-Reviews-La_Cascina-Montecatini_Terme_Province_of_P... read more

We decided to have a quiet day today, so we drove the 40km down the Autostrada to Lucca, this is our second time at Lucca. This time we chose to park in a different park and walk a different part of the town, although Rose did want to go back to the book store that specialised in English and Japanese books. We walked up to to the other end of Lucca and found a loverly river running through the town. We continued to find more and more Public halls and Churches. What a lovely town Lucca is and so easy to walk around as is flat. Later that afternoon we where back to the local pool for swim and sun baking. What a life we have. This night we had agreed that Pasta was off the ... read more

For Al's first day we kept it quiet and decided to go to a hill top town near by. The town called Montecatini Alto could be accessed by Car or a Funicular Train. As the train is closed from 12:30 to 2:30 for lunch and we needed to be back at the accommodation by 3pm we decided to split with Rose and Al taking the Funicular Train and I drove up. Montecatini Alto is a lovely hill top town with all the usual tourist shops and BNB's. We selected Ristorante 'Caffè Giusti' dal 1898 for lunch and I know I keep saying it, but wow, another great meal. After we got back to our Accommodation and met with the cleaning lady we went down to the local community pool for an afternoon swim. Another great day ... read more

As we arrived in Tuscany the cold Rose had developed from Scotland transferred to me somewhere in France, and we decided to focus on getting well. So we had a couple of days in the villa and focus on getting well. As you can imagine this became boring quickly and by the third day we decided we needed to venture further than the supermarkets and went out for dinner to a local restaurant. Ristorante Pizzeria Da Caino La Cantina will focus in future blogs as we intend to have this as outrTuesday dinner venue. The next day we went to Lucca for the day, about a 20 minute drive. Once we arrived and parked, we aimlessly walked the streets absorbing the atmosphere while Rose found a little bag shop and purchased a replacement bag for the ... read more

There’s been a lot in the media lately about how crowded and horrible Italy is at the moment with throngs of tourists etc etc. But we seemed to find ourselves far away from all of that in a beautiful little pocket of Tuscany just over the border from Liguria. We started our journey from Turin and ventured to Albenga to visit with Franca and Luciano. Irene was also there enjoying the seaside with her grandparents. It was lovely to see them and all the girls enjoyed a swim in the sea while I dusted off my Italian and chatted with Franca. We had a quick lunch at the beach and then dropped in on Luciano who was resting at home, not in the best health. We shared some funny memories of when I’d stayed with them ... read more