Villa Alessandra Lucca

... and limited to pastry or pizza at 5pm, but I found Brasserie La Loggia near the station that had a full menu all day.
Walked in to order a pasta and was amazed and delighted that they also had a display case full of Belgian, German, Dutch and other quality beers.
Had a La Trappe with my bolognese. Even though it's made in the Netherlands it was still a good tripel.
Was ready to go after that but ...

... ill once we made it to the station in Pisa. Not so fun.

Still, ok – we’re now in Pisa, right?, and so we should make the best of it. After getting a better map from the local tourist office, we walked from the Pisa train station to the Fiume Arno River (the same river that flows through Florence). During our walk, we saw this unique, teeny-tiny church named Santa Maria della Spina, which hung right on the edge of ...

... mais apres presque 900 ans, elle est toujours la. dans le meme espace, il y a la cathedrale et un autre batiment , tous ca, en marbre blanc. En dehors de cette attraction, pise possede encore une bonne partie de ces fortification. si non, c'est une ville etudiante, avec 3 universites,donc il y a quand meme pas mal de vie

... whatever we wanted from that room... This was at 3pm too, not like we arrived at some weird hour.
The "dorm" was just an apartment with 6 beds in 1 room, a kitchen and 4 beds in the room joined to the kitchen with no door between - check out the photos on facebook.
Glad we booked the cheaper 6 bed dorm and not the more expensive 4 bed!!!
Found out later that day they have another "dorm" downstairs with a 6 bed room and a double bed in ...

... and I had a wonderful 50th. Everyone sang to me in the small restaurant. Thank you everyone for following us and keeping us close with your wonderful comments. To sign off I will say that.....
"There is nowhere like Home".
Love Mick and Lisa

Hi Everyone!

After the miserable week of midterms…

I celebrated a friend's birthday at a restaurant called Dantes. It caters to students, as there is no cover charge and a free drink included with the meal. I can honestly say the food was delicious. We had a large group so it was a lot of fun. I think the birthday girl, Davita also had a good time celebrating her 21st in ...

... shower, just a big tub with a hand shower whose pressure was questionable, but I managed. I got out on the bike again and went back to Marlia center and Lammari, happily pulling Euros from a bank machine.
In the late afternoon Adriano took us to Nozzano, where there is a castle and a church. The castle was closed until September– who knew?– but the church was open; another of those old Italian women ...

... narrow (they have a crazy one way system) and there are only six gates you can drive through to get into the walled portion of town. We walked along a section of the wall and then decided to get down and explore a little, promising ourselves we would do the complete circuit before we left. We went into a few of the many churches that Lucca is home to. It's amazing to me that each church, basilica or cathedral we ...

On our way to Rome we went through Pisa and stayed in the city for a couple of hours. There really isn't a whole lot to see in Pisa other then the Leaning Tower, of course. So we payed 3 euro to have our backpacks stored at the station and we went in search for the Tower. It didn't take long before we ...

... entrance, where we had parked on the first day we had visited Lucca, and walked down Via Elisa, took Ches's photograph with Puccini on the way ,and we located the internet caffe we hadn't used last week. After two major screw-ups, we decided to use this one instead. Five minutes later it wiped all my keying, so I gave up and Ches took over. An hour later, we think she was successful. We walked up the southern side of the town. The Palazzo Ducal looks like an impressive ...