Our day started with a beautiful drive to Pisa to find out if that tower really is leaning. Turns out, it’s all about your perspective, from the side shown below, yep, definitely leaning. But if you looked from the right side of the first photo below, directly at the tower, all good! Pisa was about an hour and a half from our rental, approximately 108 km. The weather was truly spectacular. We stuck to outside viewing here in Pisa and enjoyed taking the mandatory leaning pics.

We left Pisa and headed to have lunch at the beach, only about 20 minutes away, on the Ligurian Sea. I don’t believe I’ve shared how much Google translate helped us on the trip! We could open up the app, click on camera and choose translate Italian to English to see the menu in English. We had a great server who was fun.

Next stop… Lucca! Approximately 45 minutes away, we made it to Lucca. We parked and headed towards to one of the city gates.

“Lucca is a city on the Serchio river in Italy’s Tuscany region. It’s known for the well-preserved Renaissance walls encircling its historic city center and its cobblestone streets. Broad, tree-lined pathways along the tops of these massive 16th- and 17th-century ramparts are popular for strolling and cycling.” -Google

So… adventurous beings that we are, we decided to rent one of the quad-cycles and take a ride along those massive walls. We started out decently peppy, there was a bit of an incline to bike up to get to the top of the wall and we must have looked like we were struggling a bit as we went by a jogger who took pity on us and gave us a final push up the top. Thank you kind stranger! We had a nice horn and two steering wheels in the front for the guys which was fun. We did realize that we couldn’t adjust in the seat if it would cause us to stop pedaling as it was tied to our biking partner in the front. L.J. started getting leg cramps so we had a couple of stretching stops. We had lots of laughter and using our little horn to get by pedestrians, dog walkers, other cyclists, etc. As we finished up our ride, L.J. mentions that we could have gotten an e-bike instead… we gave him a hard time about not mentioning it before but it honestly was a great time.

After our rigorous exercise, we needed gelato. I know that surprises you. We found a cute little spot that had outdoor seating so Barry, Brenda and I availed ourselves of some cold deliciousness and took a little break as L.J. continued photographing.

We then went exploring the city a bit and walked around. We saw several very talented street performers and loved the energy of the city. Then we found a restaurant in the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro called Da Gherardo. There were restaurants all around the circle of this Piazza, side by side to one another with their menus out for you to have a look. We arrived at a good time and were able to get a table, lots of places were full with reservations – it was Saturday night date night!

Don’t worry! We found some gelato to cap off the fabulous day! Check twice a day off for today!