THE ITALIAN BLOG 2012: 04/30/12

Sadly, yesterday was a complete washout after the bright sunny preceding days. Hense the absence of a report.

So today I managed to get to Lucca. Its only an easy 30 minute train ride away and well worth the effort. The mountains in the distance are well over a 1000 metres, and were snow covered until a few days ago.

This small medieval town is completely surrounded by a high walkable wall. The foot path in the picture leads round to some stairs and then you are in the town.
Most towns here have a link with one celebrity or another and here it seems Puccini, the composer is a popular lad. He had a string of names, but Giacomo was born here and just to let everyone know there is a bronze statue of him in one of the squares, several restaurants have images of him.

That's Lucca's claim to fame but it does have some great places to see, such as the Amphitheatre which is an almost perfectly round square, if you see what I mean!

The first time I heard of the new term for 'second hand' was a few weeks ago. It seems that no one would be seen dead buying clothes under that description, so you buy 'vintage' second hand clothes now. I suppose Camden Town sounds a bit upmarket but it all boils down to the same thing, a surcharge to justify the name and description of course. I wonder if they import used clothes from Britain too?

Although not so many as Florence or even Pisa, there are those intimidating herds of human kind who are followers of the sacred umbrella. One sight of them can turn the blood cold as they march, relentlessly bleating, and hanging on every word of their great leader. Just as in 'Animal Farm', they don't remember very much. Their weapon of choice is sharpened Nordic walking sticks I believe. I love'em really, really!

Then there was guy saving on his water bills, filling plastic bottles with water from the virgin.

The whole of the town within the old walls is mainly very historic. Its full of those kinds of streets more like corridors, where you hear the echo of your own footsteps, that is unless the Umbrellas are bearing down on you.