Florence to Lucca - Day 92

Date: November 18th, 2009
Distance: 134km
Country: Italy
Song of the Day: Goin' Out - Superdrag

Left Florence today. It felt good to be back on the road. The road out was pretty easy for the first 20km as well. Right along the Arno river. Flat, with no wind, so I was making good time. There was one minor problem though. I kept along the north side of the river. This turned out to be a bad plan as the main highway is along the south side. After Signa the terrain on the north side gets significantly more hilly. So I was going up and over these big hills and I could look down and see cars cruising along the flat road on the other side. Argh. Eventually I did make it across and the road was much flatter. I liked the scenery from that angle better. Still big hills to the north of the Arno, but I could glide by on level ground. I even saw this cool tower way up on the cliff. So the road to Pisa was pretty easy.

Yep, went to Pisa. Yep, they have a funny tower there. I was actually kind of impressed by it. It does have a significant lean to it. The lean is almost graceful though. Not so far as to be scary, but just enough to make it unique. So it is neat to look at. I also think it is probably one of the few engineering failures that has become a tourist attraction. Yes, I did get a couple of pictures. Including this one that everyone takes. Har-har.

From there I headed up to Lucca. I rolled into town and through the town walls. Pretty cool. The hostel I was going to stay at was closed though. Crap. I was hoping someone was just on a dinner break, but no. Maybe it is closed for the season, or maybe it was just one day. Either way, I needed to find somewhere else to stay. There was another place that wasn't exactly a hostel but it did have dormitory style sleeping, as in cheap. But I couldn't exactly remember the name or the location. I knew it was outside the walls on the west side and the symbol was a lion. I was hoping someone would know. No one I asked did though. Finally a found a couple of women working late. Their shop said something about "Internet Point" so I figured that I would ask. They didn't know. But they let me look it up, sure enough Hotel Leone de Santa Anna, just down the street.

When I got there the lady running the place had a bit of a Basil Fawlty attitude. She seemed a bit annoyed that I would want a place to sleep. (And it wasn't even late.) I did get a bed in their dorm room, but no one else was there. Oh well. At least I had a cheap room all to myself. Oh, and they had internet. There was a code and it took me an hour to figure out that the "|" that was written on the card was actually "I". So I updated my blog, watched a movie on my 'puter and went to bed.

-Dravis