Lucca

Michelle and Evan - The nicest New Zealanders in the world. I have an open invitatio nto New Zealand any time. Any takers? We met ont he train to Lucca and hung out a bit in the following days.



Jess and Ellen on our way to the opera, La Boheme. Lucca is hometown to Puccini, opera great. This yea ris some anniv of some Puccini thing so there is a Puccini festival and La Boheme was a part of it. And oh my gosh! I me the nicest lady in a walking tour of the city and she paid for me to go to the opera! I never even learned her name, she was so nice.



I did two nights in Lucca. A sweet little town between Florence and Pisa.

Something noteable in Lucca... I stayed in this hostel and haaaaaa! There was a real movement going on in the dorm room to remove one certain lady from the room. A real anti-red-lady campaign was going on, championed mostly by the Dutch woman, Ellen. Ellen marched down to the front counter to complain about the lady and lobbied hard for others to do so as well - 2 other girls went down and complained. Here's the deal: OK this red-lady (she was always wearing red) always came in REALLY late and just would turn on the light and make lots of noice, and talk on her cell phone, and use the sink and she even got up at 5am one morning and did the same thing. Meanwhile a room full of 7 sleeping people were rudely awakened. Now, mostly I just thought this was funny and I would groan initially when awakened, then would proceed to laugh because I mean, COME ON! Who does that? And really I was amazed and my thoughts continued along the lines of, "Wow lady. People like you DO exist."


This is a picture from a pew nea rthe front of a church where I sat for like an hour and read and prayed and wrote and cried and listened to my "Erin Beksel" mix on my ipod. Funny, the Christian music on my ipod is the "Erin Beksel" mix. I think because once a long time ago I made her a mix of Christian music and just kept adding to it with the Christian songs I like. So, thanks Erin Beksel, and Aaron Shust.



AAAHHHAHAHAHAAAA! (See below for visual.) When you go to a restr and it's busy and you need a table for one, often you are paired with another 'table for one.' This guy, Mauricio, didn't speak English. Hatcher has no Italian. Thank God for my meager phrasebook. I was able to glean the following facts about Mauricio during the painful cross-cultural lunch:

• He is 32 years old
• He has one younger brother
• He is married - has been for 10 years - met his wife in a Disco
• He lives 15km from Lucca
• He works in the car industry, his wife is a banker
• He is an optimist, not a pessimist
• He believes in God and is Protestant
• He does not believe in extra-terrestrial life

Oh my dear Lord. He was finished with lunch before me, but because he is a gentleman, waited for me to finish. I was like "Oh for goodness sakes buddy, give it up - this is horrible. Just go." But no, after I finished eating, then he ordered a coffee!


Various Lucca pics...





Hey there was a Rhythmic gymnastics competition going on!



And today I rolled into Vernazza - a town in the Cinque Terre. I will be here till Thursday if I can figure out how to get a train to meet Besty in France... Otherwise I met be here forever.