More stairs! We had 6 days in Lucca which should have been a good chance to rest, relax and recover from the first couple of weeks and set out with vigour to explore all that Italy has to offer. We had some transport dramas getting there and an airbnb host who was insistent on a precise arrival time so she could explain (with the help of a friend who spoke english, how to turn the stove on, what to do if the electricity tripped and how to negotiate the 4 recycle bins). Lugging luggage up those narrow flights of steps after a long day negotiating transport issues you really just want to relax, not get a run down of how every little detail works. Most of the locations I’d stay up to this point left you to your own devices with often too little information, but this was a detailed initiation and too much information! Still, the place was nice and well equipped. The wifo was dodgy, which turned out to be pretty common just about everywhere we stayed.

Unfortunately, behind the scenes there were some serious in-house issues we were dealing with. Communication, decision making, planning; all were not going well. It was a pretty rocky week and we were all looking for early flights home. A bit of a disaster really. Still, we were in Italy. We pushed through and tried to make the most of it.

Still being fairly new to the concept of Walled Towns, I set out to walk around the top of the Lucca Walls. And wow, these walls are wide and beautiful. Like a boulevard. About 4km long and I was blessed with intermittent light sun showers along the way. Lucca is a great little town with a gazillion churches. Very few cars in the Old Town so lots of push bikes. We stayed just outside the walls with a rural scene from the back door but not far from a main street. I couldn’t live in Italy based solely on the sirens of the emergency vehicles. Like a cross between a high pitched wail and a clown honking a seriously annoying air horn.