Day 14

Italy 2010

Day 14

We found out the weather man in Italy is not much different than those in Utah. There was a 90% chance of rain this morning, but we got up to sunshine after sleeping in. At least the Italian mattress was on our side as the bones didn’t suffer.

We’re not sure we’ve painted an adequate picture of Lucca and the walls. This was a very rich city, and the merchants didn’t want to fight wars to grab more real estate. They had all they wanted, so they spent a fortune hiring good bricklayers to build an immense wall that looks like the following today:

Back in the day when the wall was meant to keep invaders out, there was also a wide moat tens of meters wide. It is rumored that the first biathlon was held here with the two key events being swimming and pole vaulting.

The bricklayers had work for 100 years for the building of this wall.

The 90% chance of rain occurred during the middle of the day for about three or four hours. There was loud thunder (and probably lightening that we couldn’t see because of the high walls and narrow alleyways) and hard rain. We walked around with umbrellas and still got wet. We took shelter at a bar and had the best cappuccino and espresso we’ve had here in Lucca. We would have took shelter under the trees, but a lot of them just grow straight up. These are not your average elm trees.