Voyages of the S.S. Whalen: Italian Road Trip Part III

Our next stop was the walled city of Lucca. Lucca was recommended by some friends who had been to Italy recently. It's a good, central location from which we could take day trips to see some amazing sites. We thought we were getting an apartment very close to Lucca, but apparently the map they had was a little off, and we had to climb a very long, windy, narrow (basically one way) road to the top of a mountain (and down again). As we made the ascent, Asher started playing a funny game in which he repeated the following phrase over and over again, as my knuckles were turning white from nervous fear - "Car fall off the mountain, mommy. Car go down, daddy?" Yeah, that was fun...

But we made it to our place, and we had some wonderful views.

Morning in Lucca

The day we chose to go to Lucca turned out to be a little rainy. Asher loved this of course :) We were just happy that I remembered to bring his rain boots. Lucca is a small town that is surrounded by a wall. But it's not just a small wall that surrounds it, a few hundred years ago they planted trees on top of it and made a green space for pedestrians to stroll around. It was pretty cool.

And since it was raining, there were lots of puddles for Asher to jump in.

Shooting down his nemesises (nemesi?) - those flying rats, aka pigeons :)

Looking into the town from the wall...

Asher giving himself a charming smile in the reflection in the glass.

When we got back, Asher refused to take a nap. So, of course, a couple hours later, he crashed on the floor while playing with his toys :) Such a trooper!

We went back the next day when the weather was better, and walked around some more. It turned out to be a beautiful day to enjoy a charming little town.

The Piazza Anfiteatro
It's shaped in an oval because it was built on the remnants of an old Roman amphtieater

Cathedral

Almost every column was a different design. Very cool.

Walking on the wall

The wall spanned from the lightpost on the left to up over the brick overhang.

It's a pretty wide wall, and I love that there are trees planted all along it.

After a day of walking around, we drove back up the mountain and enjoyed a relaxing evening together.

The next destination on our list of places to go was Pisa, to see it's leaning tower!

And here it is! They even got the trees to lean :)

It's pretty impressive. After being there in person, I really had no desire to go up to the top. Not like we would have anyway, cause I'm pretty sure it's all steps, and strollers and lots of steps really don't mix.

Impressive!

Couldn't pass up taking pictures of everyone "holding" the tower up :)

The rest of the buildings on the grounds near the Leaning Tower of Pisa that get overlooked... the circular one is a baptistry and the other one is a cathedral

- or so Sean says, I had no idea what they were :)

Gelatos outside of the tower :)

Our last day trip from Lucca was to Cinque Terre. These are five cities that are located along the Italian Riviera, or the coast of north western Italy. They are now UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We had heard some wonderful things about them and decided that we needed to go. Upon reading about Cinque Terre, it turned out that in order to reach some of the cities, you had to do some serious hiking, or take a ferry. But there were two of the five cities that you could walk between - so that's what we decided to do. We drove to and parked in the first city - Riomaggiore.

When we got there, we walked around and explored. The town was had beautiful colors and steep roads/stairs everywhere.

Asher loved walking down to the waterfront, but we were both on our guard in case he decided he wanted to go swimming :)

And the views were lovely...

When we had gotten our fill of Riomaggiore, we decided to take path called Via Dell'Amore, that connected Riomaggiore to the second city Manarola. It started out as a tunnel that had some amazing mosaics on the walls...

Asher had a great time looking at the art work... or himself in the art work :)

When we got to the end of the tunnel, we saw that the rest of the pathway was blocked off. Fortunately, there was a information center right there, so we asked how to get to Manarola. We were told that there had been a mud slide the week before, which was why the path was closed. We then asked if there were any alternative ways to get to Manarola. We were told that yes there are. You can take the train, or the ferry. No worries, we will just take the train. Upon asking for tickets, we were told, "Oh wait, I forgot to mention that the conductors are on strike today, so the trains aren't running today." No worries, we will just take the ferry. Upon asking for ferry tickets, we were told, "Oh sorry, the water is too choppy today, so the ferries aren't running today"........fantastic.

Well forget you Cinque Terre!!! :)

It was pretty funny at the time, and instead of seeing any more of Cinque Terre, we got directions to another coastal town, that was beautiful as well, Porte Venere.

Goodbye Cinque Terre - Maybe another time... but probably not :)

One of the port cities on the way to Porte Venere

Porte Venere!

When we got there, we found parking that may or may not have been legal :)

So this was going to be a short stroll around the city.

The beautiful streets of Porte Venere. I wished I had had more time to explore. But Sean was good to me and let me do a quick exploration while he entertained Asher.

Then we hung out by the water for awhile.

Asher, like most kids I'm sure, loves to drag his hand along things as he walks. Whether it's walls, buildings, plants, or furniture, this is what he does. Unfortunately, this one time he learned the hard way what a cactus is and why we should stay away from them :)

In the pictures below he touches the cactus and then after realizing that it hurts, he turned back and gave it a fearsome glare :)