Yesterday involved a early start from my lovely hotel in Marina di Pietrasanta and crossing over from the west coast of Italy over to the Adriactic coast on the eastern side. The route I took was through the very pretty city of Lucca, the beautiful city of Florence and through Arezzo, Perugia before hitting the gateway over the high red potato producing plains of Umbria at Foligno and then down into Tolentino and finally to Ele's place near Macerata.
So, first stop was Lucca. Lucca is situated about halfway between Pisa and Florence and the main part of town is surrounded by Renaissance walls. Inside its a very compact centre and it has an air of wealth and prosperity. The people were immaculately dressed even by Italian standards. I spent about an hour wandering around and taking in the towns sights. There were one or two homages to the City's most famous son, Giacomo Puccini. As I could only park for an hour I managed to miss out on the main square and catherdral but i managed to see the church of San Michele in Foro and the Basilica di San Frediano. Both of which are much nicer than the main cathedral anyway, well of course they are. I'm not going to admit I got lost am I now?
Anyway here are some photos of Lucca!
This is the San Michele in Foro
Basilica di San Frediano
They run these tiny little electric buses around the narrow streets of Lucca
And finally Steve James flogs mushrooms in Lucca. The APE!!
There was also a student protest in full flow when I got there. Berlusconi is cutting student grants and university funding again.
Then I pushed on eastwards towards Florence and set the Tom Tom to take me to the city sentre where I hoped I would find ample parking. What I did find was a exciting city to drive in, then hit a complete maze of narrow streets where local urchins on Piaggos kept cutting me up. I finally parked up a stones throw away from the Duomo, which I have to say is unbelievable.
Have a look for yourself....
Its a splendid example of architecture but I last time I saw so as many tourists I was in Venice. So I drove out of the city centre and went to see the Football stadium.
Here is the Stadio Communale Artemio Franchi.
After this it was a pretty uneventful drive across the rest of Tuscany and Umbria to Macerata.
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