Craig's blog

This morning we woke up, with too little sleep after last night’s concert and packed our bags to move to the next hotel.  We had breakfast in the hotel (which had long lines when the 75 of us descended on the room at the same time) and the boarded our bus.  We rode for 4 ½ hours in a steady rain that lasted almost the whole drive before we arrived in the walled city of Lucca.  We got there later than planned and ended up having a little more than two hours in the city.  The four of us (Patty, Kelli and Katie and I) found a great little restaurant where we had salads and pasta before taking a quick tour of the city. We visited the old Roman amphitheater and climbed one of the old towers to the top which has a small grove of trees growing at the top!  We walked down the main drag which is a tiny alley that looks hundreds of years old, but which has high-end clothing stores all along.  We ended by having our first gelato before boarding the bus.

We drove about 30 minutes to the town of Montecatini where we will stay for the next 3 nights.  The hotel isn’t as nice as the last place we stayed and there were a number of problems with the rooms for various people in our tour.  First, there weren’t enough rooms and some people had to move to a different hotel.  Second, the rooms are very small.  Third, the wifi is basically useless.  Finally, Kelli & Katie’s room is off in a separate small building that probably used to be a maid’s quarters.  They were somewhat uncomfortable being off by themselves and are hoping to change rooms tomorrow.

We had dinner in the hotel’s dining room and it was our first disappointing meal although it had a salad bar which was great.  I’ve been really happy with the excellent fresh salads we’ve been able to find at almost every meal.

Pictures from today will eventually end up here when I find reasonable wifi.