Sunday, 29 April 2018

Lucca to Montecatini Alto

Lucca to Montecatini Alto - 21 miles

The parking, or “sosta” as it's known in Italian, had filled right up. We were aware that next Tuesday is a public holiday in Italy so if they were anything like the Spanish, most people would take Monday off and make it a four-day weekend. We were on our guard!

Piazza Napoleone

San Giovanni

Duomo San Martino

Asymmetric frontage

Some finer detail
















As planned, up early and a 10 min walk to the city walls, taking Jamie as he appeared to be much better – we'd actually starved him for 24 hrs which is an approved treatment for dicky tummy. Lucca has no definite central place of attractions so we headed along Via Vittorio Emanuel II towards the Duomo San Martino, finding Piazza Napoleone (but no statue, well if it was he'd forgotten to put his trousers on.....!) We passed a number of other churches along the way, as well as attractive piazzas, but noted that despite it being a very religious country many of the churches were in a state of disrepair. Not so of the main Duomo, however, which was undergoing some restoration. We particularly noticed the black and white horizontal lines, a very asymmetric frontage and almost all the columns had been decorated differently. A longish queue of folk waiting to pay their entrance fee to go in, but again Jamie precluded us from doing the same.

Piazza Anfiteatro Romano (red van parked just as we arrived!!! Ignore it)

Taking a roughly circular route we slowly wandered back to the van, finding a lovely oval-shaped piazza, Anfiteatro Romano, full of cafes of course then Via San Gorgio, which was the main shopping street. A short walk along the top of the walls – there is a wide pathway apparently all around the city – before exiting through one of the gates back to the van. An attractive place to visit and which apparently is also on some cruise ship itinerarys – we met a couple who were “lost”.

Bi-annual International Festival of Cardboard Art

Tunnel under/along the city walls

But now to decide what next. We were in need of some serious shopping and in view of the impending public holiday thought a few days on a campsite away from the coast would be nice. We spotted an attractive looking ACSI site at Montecatini, a place Terry visited with a coach party some years ago, so decided on there. But first TomTom found the local Carrefour where we also had lunch, then took us the off-motorway route to Montecatini Alto, pausing to refuel at the cheapest place we've yet seen in Italy, although that's relative of course. €1.42 per litre!

A nice run up into the Tuscany hills and the site turned out to be every bit as attractive as the book said. We were given a nice roomy and part-shaded pitch with lovely views and settled in for a few days.


We stayed at: 
Camping Belsito, Montecatini Alto. ACSI €19. Full facilities including small shop, restaurant/bar, 2 swimming pools and wellness centre. Terraced pitches with good views of Tuscany.

Technical note: we bought Bren a new camera as the old one, though still taking excellent pictures, kept eating batteries. The panoramic view above was a first try - looks good!
Also please excuse the random placing of pictures - I've reformatted the pages to be wider and it's upset the placings. Should be better in future posts.

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