Lucca, Italy - Day 58

Today, we awoke docked in Livorno. Livorno is a large port city that the cruise ships use for the dropping point for visits to Florence, Pisa, Cinque Terre and Lucca.

We had hired a car and driver to take us to visit the walled village of Lucca. First, we went a little north of Lucca and visited Villa Reale located outside the small village of Marlia. Elisa Baciocchi, Napoleon’s sister, created the villa by joining the sixteenth century Villa Orsetti with some surrounding properties. After the fall of Napoleon, the property fell into disrepair. In 1924, the parents of the present owners restored the property. The gardens are incredible and we spent an hour walking around viewing them.

We then went to Lucca and strolled the shopping lanes and stopped for lunch in a small plaza beside a church. Lucca is quaint and has better than average shops, very little of the souvenir stores you find elsewhere. The wall that surrounds the city is very thick, enough to have been able to have two lanes of traffic atop it once long ago. Today, it is a pedestrian-only walkway. We had a nice time and were glad we finally got to see this town. We don’t think we’ll ever come back to the town but the surrounding areas definitely need to still be explored.