29 June 2013 Ligurian Sea

Hello to all.  What do I say, we have just arrived back from Lucca.  I fell in love with it last time and had to go back, I am indeed more in love than ever.  One walks thru the gates to the town and it is akin to travelling back in time.

We met in the Princess at 7.40 this morning for our tour to Lucca, a very intimate group only three small busloads today.  We met our guide Pierino, lovely fellow, he gave us some info whilst on our 45 min journey.  We docked at the port of Livorno an extremely big port, 160,000 people live in Livorno, many large ships, three in today, but other days more, so one can imagine how many souls there are to get out on to tours etc.  There are also lots of ferries going back and forth to Sardinia and Corsica, one very interesting thing, we saw all these bundles of branches ready for transportation, very many of them, we were told they are sent to Sardinia for their fireplaces etc as they are not permitted to fell any trees there, the world is a funny place, it seems an extremely expensive way to do things, the double, triple etc handling of such an item. 

We were travelling along thru Tuscany, there are 20 regions in Tuscany. Lucca has always been an independent Kingdom even going back 500 years.  They were very isolated and to keep themselves safe they built a wall around the city, it is 4 kilometres long and it completely surrounds the old town, it is the only city with the wall still intact.  The Medici family were very rich and influential in Florence and they pretty much owned everything and everyone, they loaned to people keeping themselves very rich indeed, but they did not own Lucca.  Lucca being as isolated as it was, wanted to keep its freedom, they were great merchants (as they still are –beautiful and elegant shops and this is how their economy still works today) so were able to survive independently. When Lucca became part of Italy when the country was formed in 1861, the townspeople bought the walls from the government for 1,000,000 lire (a large amount at that time) and so they have been retained.  Other cities such as Florence destroyed their city walls at that time. There is a population of 20,000 who live within the walls, and 87,000 live outside the walls.  The walls are now the site of a flowering greenbelt and the tree-lined garden boulevard on the top of the wall serves as the perfect place for a beautiful walk.

A celebration is being held in Lucca from the 9^th July to celebrate their 500 years of freedom, lots of music, Diana Krall, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and Leonard Cohen (who I absolutely love – he must be about 80) all going to be there.  I cannot believe I am missing a concert with Leonard by 10 days.  One day I will get to one of his concerts. This festival is called The Lucca Summer Festival. 

This was a very beautiful day. We had coffee and a Danish in a very lovely little café in our free time, I did some shopping, Sam feels we should get straight back on the bus after the tour none of this free time business, all the men agree with him I think.  We journeyed back to Livorno going via Pisa as it is Saturday today and lots of traffic. 

One thing I did forget to mention yesterday, the port of Civitavecchia sees about 3,500,000 cruise passengers per year, there were only three ships in yesterday but on Wednesdays there are always nine.  As one can imagine they are delighted to see us all those tours, all that shopping, the baby boomers are certainly a presence in all these places.  I am going to hand over to Sam just on the off chance I have forgotton something he said that is most unlikely.

 We had an early dinner upstairs then went to the show, it was the MacDonald Bros very talented boys from Scotland, they came 4^th in the X factor, excellent show.  Time now to hit the hay, very busy day tomorrow in Monaco.    All the best, love Sabine and Sam  XXX