Spring Break 2014 Lucca and Volterra, Italy

On Tuesday morning, we left Cinque Terre by train at 9am, picked up our car in La Spezia, and set out for Lucca, Italy.  Lucca came highly recommended by one of Chris' coworkers, so we thought we would stop in and see it for a few hours.  Lucca is a walled city, and once we arrived it was easy to see that the place to spend your time was actually on the wall.  We opted to rent bikes to see the city since we didn't have a lot of time.

The kids were loving the biking option.

Riding by the palace.

We decided to eat an outdoor cafe with a view of this church.  

But, in about 20 minutes time….the sky started to look like this and the wind was crazy!  Time to move inside.

And before we knew it, it was raining and hailing.  The workers at the restaurant were taking pictures of the hail.  They had never seen it before.  I explained to them that it was hailing because we were in town.  That is just our luck!

Continuing our bike ride after the rain.

It's hard to tell, but this square is actually round.  It would have been nice to spend more time here.

We went to return the bikes around 1:00.  We were really behind schedule from waiting out the rain.  And, when we got to the rental place, the owner was on lunch (of course he was.)  So, we had until 2:00 to do more riding until he returned.

We checked out the cathedral and did some riding through the town.

For my friend Michele with one "l".

We were happy the sun came out before the end of our bike ride (riding along the wall.)

Lucky shot!  Hahaha!

We got the bikes returned and set out for Volterra.  It took us about an hour and a half to get there through the winding roads of Tuscany.

The gorgeous scenery as we made our way up to Volterra.

I was just a little bit excited!

The sign on the elevator at our hotel.  Ummm….I hope we don't have a storm!

Our nice big room.

We decided to take an evening walk around the town and look for a place to have dinner. 

In the square of the city, we thought we found the main building that was used in New Moon.  More on that later…..

I loved the arches throughout the city.  I thought the town was stunning and not just because of the Twilight movies!

The views over the wall were gorgeous!

Breathtaking!

The town square as the sun was setting.

Under the Tuscan sun(set)….

More on Volterra in the next post, and then we are off to Siena.  The fun continues!

Until next time,
Wendy