I was up early again. I need every available moment with my eyes open in Vernazza!

Our home in Vernazza.

A cup of coffee in hand and heading to our patio I saw Giuliano walking up the path. We chatted for a while about the state of the tourists (too many) and lack of respect by many visitors. There were hords of people both days we stayed so I understand!

Sue got up and we packed our overloaded bags and made a commitment to eliminate some items, as many as possible, to send home from Lucca.

I was so happy to see Massimo and his twin open after the flood. They have hands down the most amazing pastries

We wanted to get an early start so we could travel to Lucca and enjoy our day but Vernazza proved to be too hard to say goodbye to. When we finally made it to the train station, Suzanne had tears in her eyes but her smile soon took over.

The smile says it all

LaSpezia to Lucca took longer than expected. The train we were waiting for simply vanished off the board. Thankfully we found a group of Italian travelers who were also to be on that train and helped the non-Italian speakers get to the right platform.

Crowded train platform in LaSpezia

The toilette in the women’s banyo at the station… that took a minute to figure out!

We did take our time this morning so didn’t make it to the train station until 10. Arrival in Lucca was about 1:30 pm and by the time we wandered through the town to our hotel it was after 2. Our plans to walk part of the Via Francigena were looking less than ideal.

Lucca is such a cute city. There were markets everywhere, families, gelato and pizza. We followed google maps to our hotel where we found keys in the mailbox near the front door. Could or would anyone do that in the US? Probably not.

Sunset from the wall- so beautiful!

Our apartment was up two flights of stairs… of course. The room was so cute and comfortable with a full kitchen available to us if we only had time to cook.

I asked about mailing a package home to the USA and our host Grazia said we could leave a bag at the hotel and she would keep until we returned Monday (another story here…). I think the post office will be shut by the time we return Monday so Grazia offered to research how and where. So nice!

We sorted through our backpacks looking for things we did not need or at least could live without on this trip. That felt good! Later we walked with our backpacks free of the extra baggage along the wall that encloses Lucca, and outside of town briefly. Success!

Our evening test run with lighter backpacks

We picked up our pilgrim passports at the tourist information office and now have our first Via Francigena stamp!

Traveling often makes laundry a challenge. We found a laundromat which was not too far from our room and got to work. Our laundry was washed but we arrived so late that it closed just as our machine was done washing so we brought everything back to our room to hang dry.

There was a room full of St Bernard’s. Sue had to pet

All in all it was a beautiful Saturday evening, nearly a full moon. We are feeling good!

#enjoythejourney