The First Tuscany Show, Lucca

When we returned from the last trip in June 2014, we had a lot of material on Tuscan towns including a solo trip we took to Lucca and three days with Lidia. The first day of that part of the trip occurred before we arrived at Lidia's house in Chiesina Uzzanase. On the way from Cinque to Lidia's house we made a stop for the day. Laura selected Lucca, on the way to Lidia's and a town where she had been in 2009 when we both were ill and couldn't see much of the place. I decided that this series of shows on Tuscany should be a chronological tour beginning at our first destination. Using the 2009 visit as a jump-off point, going back briefly to the solo trip I took there in 2001, when I was between marriages, off we went through a very thorough, but not totally complete tour of Lucca, one of the really special hill towns in Central Italy.

The studio end of the experience went more smoothly than anything I have experienced with relation to Woodstock Public Access Television since early last fall. There were no snags at all, the trailer was well heated, and there was not the faint hint of a glitch. Smooth as silk. The show displayed much of the material we had accumulated during the 2014 visit including a view of four churches, two great and well known piazzas, Napoleone and San Michele, lots of views of side streets (with an overwhelming number of bicycles parked along the way), some nice shots of the town's medieval walls, the great outdoor restaurant where we had lunch, and some very great looking gelato. I even showed how we had photographed the actual street on which we parked so as not to lose the car when we returned from the day. All in all an excellent tour of a wondrous Tuscan town.

So now that Lucca is "out of the way" we now take a close look at several "obscure" Tuscan towns, places where the vast throngs of tourists rarely visit. Lidia selected most of them with input from us. We suggested Castelnuovo di Garfagnana (a place where we almost got to in 2009 and always hankered to return), and then the almost totally esoteric village of Eglio-Sassi, where there are few internet references, and the close by to Chiesina villages of Montecarlo and Seravalle. Then to San Miniato, a town I always wanted to return to after Lidia had taken me there in either 2001 or 2002, and then a return visit to Leonardo's birthplace in Vinci. All these will consume the next three shows and bring us to end of the material garnered from last year's trip. After that, who knows? I have some material from old ideas, mostly about Florence, but by then, we return to Italy.