LIVORNO - LUCCA AND WINE TASTING

LIVORNO - LUCCA AND WINE TASTING

We were up at 6:30 for breakfast for our early start to our excursion, The Hills of Lucca, in the area of Tuscany, Italy.

We drove to Lucca, a medieval gem with its city walls still intact. Our guide walked with us to the main square and gave us maps and directions to some of the highlights. There are over one hundred churches within the city walls for 8000 people! Some dated back to the 8th century. We were let loose  on our own for almost 2 hours. We toodled along discovering the ancient Roman Amphitheatre, only part of a wall was left, many of the churches, a palace with a beautiful garden that we could see from the city walls. Wandered back to our meeting place to catch the bus to Montecarlo di Lucca for our wine tour of the Buonamico winery. This winery is a boutique one that only ships to private individuals as it produces on a small scale. After a tour of the cellars, we were offered a small lunch of local delicacies such as Fava bean salad, olives, prosciutto, salami, two different varieties of local cheeses and French bread with olive oil. The oil was so good that I bought a bottle to bring home. They were not stingy with the wine sampling so we each tried a red, a white, and a rose. After that, we went upstairs to try some of the wines that were available for import. It was a lovely end to the tour. I, of course,slept all the way back to the ship. Norma has already hit the sack and I am about to join her. Tonight we plan to go down to dinner for the last time on this cruise.