Lucca, Italia

Lucca is a small town near Pisa, Italy, but with fewer tourists (I think) because it doesn't have the famous leaning tower of Pisa in it. I didn't actually go to Pisa, so I can't judge, but I absolutely loved Lucca.


Lucca is surrounded by a city wall, and you can rent a bike and cycle around the ramparts. It takes about 20 minutes to circle the old part of the city slower. The above photo is a grassy bit on top of the wall where I ate some pizza for lunch.


I got pizza from this small family-run place. The guy working there was really cute, but didn't speak English, which probably just made him seem even cuter to me, haha. I wanted to get my food to go, so I had to figure out how to explain that in Italian. It turned out to be pretty easy, haha.


It was a beautiful sunny day, but the wall has nice shady trees on it, so it was nice and cool for biking.


I left the city around 4 in the afternoon, to head to Cinque Terre. The light was just hitting the tops of these trees. I took this shot on the gound inside the old part of the city, looking up towards the walls. A few minutes later I walked through the wall to head to the train station, very much wishing I could stay.

Back from Italy!

Yay! I'm home from Italy, and I managed to sleep in until a decent hour, and I'm going to go and pick up my new glasses soon, and go to Athens tonight, and I can upload photos now! Whee!

Except for the 400 photos on a CD I left in Italy, along with half my gifts for people, lol. But they're going to mail that to me. But I'll get them all in the end, so I'm excited about that! It's so typical of me to leave the most important stuff behind, haha.

I have so many good stories from my last couple of days.

I hiked all day with an Australian on Monday. I met these two lovely people from Uruguay on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday I went back to Milan and had a lovely time just hanging out in a park, and playing catch with a Frisbee. I had a great chat with this English couple on the train to Milan as well.

Yesterday I spent most of the day traveling home, but I sat next to a woman who is a designer for one of the top fashion houses in Milan and met the US east coast competitive pizza team in the customs line. The guy who came 4th in the world for freestyle pizza toss showed me a video of his award winning performance on his buddy's digital camera, lol, which was pretty awesome.

Then, when I got to the airport, I randomly ran into Juliana at customs, on her way home from Dubai. Then I found a confused Danish couple, and played tour guide through the airport and helped them find their bags and car rental.

Right now I'm uploading photos to facebook. I have sooo many amazing sunset photos. I have to shower now, pick up my contacts and glasses, and then go to the doctor, so I'll have to write up all of my stories sometime later. I want to remember all the great people I met.

Sunny

Sooo... no hiking for me today, so I just hung out for hours outside. I sat in the sun for awhile. I feel like I should be out there now, taking advantage of the nice weather, but then I might get sunburned.

I decided to go ahead and do laundry since I had 0 clean clothes, but I only have 2 days left that I need clothes for! Oh well. I will have a lot of options for those two days and my bag wont smell like dirty socks!

I was thinking of sunbathing this afternoon, but wanted to shave first, since I havent at all for the last couple weeks while traveling. I couldnt find any razors or shaving gel here, just 'depilazore'. So I gave it a go. But I think theres a secret to using it right, because it barely worked at all. I have never managed to use that stuff effectively...

The Italians who live here started putting their boats into the water today... My goal for today was to meet a hot Italian boy with a boat. No luck so far, but 5.30 is by no means the end of the day!!

There was a really cute boy in Lucca, working at his family restaurant. Maybe I should go back there and get him and bring him home with me...

Hiking

I spent today hiking in the Cinque Terre, these five little towns along the coast of Italy. I am staying in Manarola, so I started out from here, intending to walk to the next town along and paint a bit.

I ran into an Australian, and we ended up walking to the next 3 towns along. Whooo, about 4.5 hours of walking, although with breaks for lunch and a couple of Fantas.

I have lots of great photos to post, especially of the sunset. Tomorrow, maybe I will actually draw or try to get some sun on the beach.

My australian hiking buddy and I didnt make any plans to meet up tomorrow, so I will start out on my own again, but there are quite a lot of people around here to meet. Lots of Germans.

Haha, I just remembered one German guy heard us talking today and asked me why there are so many Americans here now. I think that they are not happy to share their great holiday spot! Also, I am the only American I know here, so maybe there arent that many of us after all, haha.

Lucca

Lucca is awesome. It is a teeny Italian town where you can bike around the whole city on the ramparts (top of the city walls.)

Also, there was a really cute boy working at the pizza shop there.

Now I am at the coast again (a different coast than before.) I am in Manarola. I am going to go for a walk now to stare at the water and think about hiking.

Cinque Terre

We skipped out on seeing most of Firenzes sights and went to Siena yesterday instead. It is a lovely little city, filled with happy tourists having fun. We had a great cheese and meat plate as our dinner at this little butcher shop.

Today I am going to Lucca. It is near Pisa, but looks a little prettier in my book. Apparently you can rent a bicycle and cycle around the ramparts, haha.

Then, this afternoon, I will move on to Manarola, a small town on the coast. Im staying there for 3 nights, and then back to Milan for a night, and back on a plane to Georgia.

Alright, time to go and catch a train!

Birthday in Firenze!

Today we are in Firenze. The train to get here was great. It only took 2 hours, so we got here nice and early at 11 am and had the whole day to walk around.

It is very crowded here though, which is a bit of a shock, as we were in Assisi yesterday, and staying in this very tiny town called Torricella on Lago Trasimeno in the middle of Umbrian hills.

Assisi is absolutely amazing. The town is like a miniature city, because it is all paved, but it is also like a small village, because the old part is fairly small, and everyone has little vegetable gardens.

We started out at the Basilica of St. Francis, which was great. Dad and I sat and drew St. Francis tomb for awhile. All while we were there, we could hear the monks singing.

We climbed to the top of the city, stopping at a castle on the way. I had this amazing pasta with truffles in it. I decided that from now on we should only eat at restaurants mentioned in our guide book. Today we stopped at this tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant at the mercato in Firenze, because it was mentioned in our book. I had the most amazing ravioli ever... mmm...

I think, because of the crowds, we will go to Siena tomorrow. Siena might be crowded too, of course, but it will be nice to go back to a smaller city. We saw the Duomo today, and Donatellos statues. There is more to see, but we dont have reservations to see Uffizi or the Accademia anyway, so we would not be able to see the top Firenze sites anyway.

All the photos I have posted were taken by my father, by the way, because I cant upload photos from my camera without the software installed, so Ill have to wait until I get home!