Hello, sorry I haven’t posted in a while, we have been pretty busy lately. I hope to start to have time to do posts more frequently. In this post I am going to tell you about the historic Italian town of Lucca! The picture above shows Piazza Anfiteatro. Piazza Anfiteatro is one of the main piazzas in the Historic Center of Lucca. If you were not aware, Lucca is surrounded by big brick walls, inside the walls is called the Historic Center or in Italian- Centro Storico. The Centro Storico is where all the cathedrals and landmarks are. Luckily our accommodation was inside the walls and pretty central so we were not very far  from most sights we wanted to see. In Lucca, every corner you turn there is a different cathedral, our first walk around Lucca was so cool; we all thought it would be awesome to live there but a person who lived in Lucca might say the same about Toronto (probably not :). We loved walking the streets of Lucca. I hope you are able to see what our experience in Lucca was from this post.This is the ceiling of the Duomo of Lucca at Piazza San Martino. We were lucky enough to be 5 doors down from Piazza San Martino and loved to go to there and take in the view of the Cathedral. On the walls of the Cathedral there were stained glass images showing different priests and important figures. There were also beautifully painted works of art including the famous painting “The Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci (not the real one).The Last Supper depicts Jesus’s last supper before his crucifixion.  My Dad and I were saying how long it must have taken to construct the cathedral because every single detail of it was paid attention to so carefully.  Wikipedia tells me it was constructed in 1063 but it looks like it could have been  built yesterday. Here is the Lucca Cathedral or in Italian- Duomo di Lucca from the outside. As you can see , the Duomo is severely asymmetrical. This is because the bell tower was already there and they started too close to the bell tower and after 2 big arches they only had room for a smaller one, creating the severe asymmetry . Talk about bad planning! 🙂Here is the view of Lucca from the bell tower beside the Duomo di Lucca. Piazza San Martino is kind of shaped like this <><>, the fountain below is in the second parallelogram of the piazza. Trust me, it looks less grim in the sunshine. There were a lot of spiraling stairs to get up to the viewing area, it was kind of scary on the way down because it was only a little metal stair that was separating you from a 65 ft drop. My legs were trembling the whole way down. On our 3rd day and 6th day in Lucca we rented bikes to bike around the city. The first time we did it we biked on top of the walls, on top of the walls there was a public path for biking and walking on (the picture above isn’t it). We went around the the walls 2 times and then returned our bikes. The next time we rented them we biked out of the walls to a path along the river called Parco Fluviale. It was really fun but very tiring. I hadn’t biked since Halong Bay in Vietnam so I was really excited to ride a bicycle again. Since the bike ride was very tiring we got to go for gelato! In Italy we are trying to have one gelato every day. At the end of Italy I will post about every single gelato place and rate them, maybe you will get the 10/10 you have all been waiting for. At the gelato place, Gelatiamo, I got the flavours Tutto Bosco (blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, and blackberry) and Gelatiamo (chocolate and hazelnut). It was really good. My mom got Tutto Bosco and Mango and my sister got Tutto Bosco and After Eight.This is the Cathedral at the biggest and most well known piazza in Lucca, Piazza San Michele. At the top of of the Cathedral there is an angel and legend says she is wearing a diamond ring because if you stand in a certain spot at night you can see a reflection of light like a diamond would make. Even though legend says that, no Italians really believe it. We sure had a great time in Lucca and I hope to be back!