THURSDAY ....morning we got up and the sun surprised us with its presence... We ran to the station and jumped on the first train west. In 30 minutes it had traveled the great distance of 18 km (this is not the famous high speed line everyone talks about) to Lucca, the birthplace of Puccini and, more important, Aldo Ballerini--Dani's father. There we changed to a more reliable form of transport:

The city of Lucca is completely enclosed by a huge wall constructed by the sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was obviously afraid of something, living there exposed in the middle of a plain with no hills for miles. ... Maybe Pisa? Maybe Florence.... or maybe she was just paranoid since Lucca is in the middle of one of the most peaceful places in the world. Think about it... how much have you heard of the Italian army initiating aggressions. As Dani reminds us, the last Italian general to win a battle was Julius Ceasar.

After a BEAUTIFUL one hour circle around the top of the walls, which, as you can see, is a huge wide boulevard (think Paris... and Napoleon's sister loved boulevards), ...

... we walked down into this medieval city and in about three hours we had seen the most amazing collection of little churches, and had the most amazing lunch. (No gelato yet... too cold!)

 The guy who owned this tower wanted to put his trees where they would get more light.... 

It was impossible walk up the 13 flights of stairs to check (we had just had lunch).... maybe next time.

Lucchesi anti-theft system for bikes:

As the sign says... "happiness street"

Our friend Memmo was right... "Da Gigi" was a fantastic place to have lunch. We could list the details, but we don't want to make everyone suffer too much. We can say there were zucchini involved... a special local soup, a pasta with a ragu of funghi and prosciutto... but, we won't bore you with the details... When we came out, Dani took this picture while waiting for the bench to be free but the guy never woke up ... 

... so we gave up and went on to explore some amazing Roman ruins embedded in the outer walls of the main Piazza (where Dani saw Eric Clapton perform a few years ago.)

.... more soon on this weekend....

Dani and Kate