Casa Dell'Angelo Gueust House Lucca

Kim had taken her grandma to Lucca last November and had fallen in love with the place. <br><br>We found a park not far from the city walls and then headed in for a look. We came across a chocolate festival in one of the piazzas and sampled a few beforw buying a hot cocolate drink...literally hot chocolate in a cup. It made me feel a bit sick.<br><br>Walking Lucca is like a big ...

... one was also closed, but there were no hours on the doors. Tara had said that she wanted to go bike riding but this time on her own bike which she handled quite well and we rode twice around the wall then walked back to the playground which the girls had seen everytime we rode around the town. On the way home we decided to look for a ...

We had 3 different trains to catch to get to Cinque Terre. We had to change at Viareggio and La Spezia. Cinque Terre means five lands and which is actually five villages which are connected by train and by hiking tracks. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a national park which charges to use the lower hiking path and apparently closes it if it gets too busy. Mountains covered with terraced vineyards and olive groves meet the Mediteranean Sea. Think ...

Just realized those not on facebook haven't seen pictures from Pisa and Florence. No long recap of Anthony and I's weekend in Tuscany, for obvious reasons. Also note that "Anthony and Alison's Great Adventure" was like taking a knife.<br><br>Love you guys! :)<br>

... also talked everyone into climbing the Clock Tower as we still had tickets for it from the day it rained. It was a pretty hard climb and a bit smelly from pigeon poo. The view was worth it though. We also had a coffee at a bar which was also a bit of a delicatessen and I found Amedi chocolate which is made in Tuscany and is supposed to be very nice.<br><br>We went home for a rest as we were heading out later for ...

... is the third oldest structure in Pisa's Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square) after the Duomo (cathedral) and the Baptistery of Giovanni. <br><br>Although intended to stand vertically, the tower began leaning to the southeast soon after the onset of construction in 1173 due to a poorly laid foundation and loose substrate that has allowed the foundation to shift direction. The tower presently leans to the southwest.<br><br>Our ...

Lucca reminded me a lot of Hopkinton, my hometown, except that Lucca is smaller, cuter, and completely enclosed by huge, Renaissance-era walls. Lucca is one of the last standing walled cities in Tuscany. While other cities in the region knocked down their walls, which originally meant for military protection, in order to expand and modernize, Lucca kept its walls and turn them into a pedestrian walkway, lined ...

... I have seen the biggest cars, trucks, and SUV's here in Lucca. I saw a Hummer parked next to one of those little smart cars. Now that was a site. Mom got a picture of that, you could put 3 of those smart cars in the Hummer. Pretty crazy. Anyway back to Lucca, there have been 3 different phases of the walls around the city, the first was in Roman times, that is how old Lucca it was a Roman principality ...

... right near the train station. It's about a mile north of the station, across the Arno River. Not really caring whether I went the "tourist" way, I took some other streets in the general direction. I ended up a good distance to the west of the tourist area, and didn't see another tourist almost the whole way there. They obviously must only spend effort to clean up the tourist areas, since there was a fair share of litter, pigeon poop, and graffiti (I've ...

... hot chocolate on Earth. Essentially it is so thick it doesn't come out of the mug. Its thicker than Ice cream. We went up the tower, its definitely on the bend. Plenty of tacky souvenirs (but then we hadnt yet reached the Vatican), about ten different sizes of model tower, with several versions to choose from: plain, coffee table lamp, multicolour light up....