Thursday 1st May (I’m back!)

Bagni di Lucca was our destination for today as the sunny spring weather was back. According to our guide book, Bagni di Lucca is known for its therapeutic, thermal hot springs and by the GPS only 20 minutes up the road. Not only did it end up taking us 4 hours to find them, they weren’t even in Bagni di Lucca but the next town along near Borgo a Monzano. The interesting thing is that even on the maps you buy in Italy they don’t show all the villages! Today was also a public holiday so only the little cafes where open and the ones we approached to ask directions, hadn’t been able to tell us to look in the next village, but only gesture directions. Leon wouldn’t be put off and drove up every tiny lane leading to the top of the hills, near the beautiful stream that you could smell the sulphur fumes coming from!

We even got out of the car and explored narrow paths up the sides of hills with still no success. Finally we decided to put it down as a nice day exploring around Bagni di Lucca and started to head for home, when on our way out of the village we noticed a small old, traditional shoe shop open that was having a sale and thought we would take a look. After buying pair of shoes for Charlotte for only 3 euro’s we thought we would try one more time and ask the shop owners if they could tell us where the springs were! The friendly elderly couple with no English skills were determined to help us and after an amazing rapid and long conversation with us, not to mention a bit of arguing between themselves and a million arrivederci’s and ciao’s we exited the shop, looked at each other to determine if either of us understood what they had been saying(He He)! We both picked up on them having relatives in Australia and that the springs weren’t here but over, maybe a road with two bridges back on the main road and up roads into the mountains. Alorra!!! Armed with our new insight into the general direction of the springs our search continued.

Amazingly we did go back onto the main road and crossed two bridges when we noticed a curious looking sign that looked like a fountain with an arrow pointing up the hill, could this be it! We followed a few more of these signs until we were lead straight into a tiny piazza with what looked to me, nowhere else to go*#@!? But as always in Italy you should just follow the signs even when they point up a road no wider than a billy-cart track, when one finally commits to this ideal, you also have to contend with the insecurities of; what if a car comes the other way, what if we can’t turn around, etc… you get the picture, so, up we went, the road was narrow, extremely steep and winding, and at one stage we went through a tiny low arch which needed the mirrors to be folded in, to be able to drive through*#@!

We knew we had reached the top as we came to a small car park with steep villas surrounding it and this time definitely nowhere else to go. We parked the car and then climbed up a lot of very steep steps and at the top to our sheer delight and disappointment, we found the springs. They were housed in a few old private villa’s/pay for spa’s or bars and looked quite exclusive, expensive and closed. We had however achieved the day’s goal and were happy for that. Apparently the spa’s came into their own in the early 19^th century when Bagni di Lucca reached its heyday as one of Europe’s most fashionable spas, frequented by emperors, kings and aristocrats. But now the towns around the spas are rather sleepy and obviously only reached by determined tourists (He He) in their own vehicle!!!

We drove back down to the little piazza at the bottom of the hill and enjoyed a gelato while taking in the beautiful scenery around the spa town.

Mamma Mia another fun adventure in Italy!