Through Tuscany and into Umbria Italy

Travelled:334km
Visited: Carrara marble quarry
Stay: Castiglione del Lago- pay parking €12/24hr and services at the shore of Lake Trasimeno GPS N43.12489 E12.05054

It was a hot and humid night with a thunder storm threatening but no cool change. We had an early start and headed for Carrara, which is internationally renowned for its marble quarries. It is famous for its flawless white stone used by sculptors including Michelangelo's 'David'. The region's 300+ quarries date back to Roman times, making it one of the oldest industrial sites in continuous use in the world. It is an amazing sight from the town. We headed out towards the Colonnata and Fantiscritti quarries, to get a closer look.

On our way through the tunnels we were stopped by a gentleman(an operator) who offered us a tour of a quarry. Being Sunday and unsure if others would be open we opted to do our own personalised tour for €10ea. We may have been 'had' but it was interesting. Here is some information he bestowed on us: the marble blocks they cut are 10m high x 10m wide x 4m deep; the big diamond saw blade cuts the bottom of the marble block on the horizontal at 1m per hour; a robot diamond drill is used to make holes in the back corners which then allows them to feed the diamond rope through to cut the sides and the back; they use metal water bladders to expand the saw cut and then a bull dozer to push it away to fall on some rubble so it doesn't shatter; this process takes 7 days for each block which is valued at €2 million; the inferior stone is ground down to powder which is sold for cosmetic and pharmaceutical use.

After our visit we took the autostrade towards Rome, we drove through Tuscany, bypassing the towns there as we had visited them last year. We decided to stop on the way in a shady spot beside the lake to escape the heat. We were doubly lucky as a cool change came through and made everything more pleasant. After dinner we went for a stroll along the lake.

Lucca

Travelled:209km
Visited:Lucca
Stay:Collechio- free parking, free aire next to sports ground close to Parma GPS N44.75178 E10.22265

We spent the majority of the day riding around Lucca and enjoying all it had to give. We rode past a few of the 100 churches that are in Lucca.

Then we found the ancient roman amphitheater which is now the Piazza dell' Anfiteatro. When you stand inside the oval plaza you can clearly see that the buildings were built around the original structure. 

As we rode we spotted the Torre Guinigi, which is easy to notice as it has trees on the very top. The Guinigi family created the garden as a symbol of the towns rebirth under their control. 

 We then started to ride along the 4km,16th century defensive walls that surround the old town that had been ruled by Napolean's sister in the early 1800's and was lucky to escape the WWII bombs. It was a lovely way to view the town.

 On the way we stopped to visit the San Martino Cathedral. It has a beautiful coloured marble facade and inside were some wonderful paintings, a small octagonal temple and some great statues.

 Our combined ticket at €7 ea allowed us to the visit the museum with some interesting treasures. After a bite to eat, 

we went to Saint Giovanni which has an archaeological site underneath it, showing 5 stratigraphic levels from the 1st century BC to the 12th century AD. 

We also climbed the 108 steps up the bell tower. 

We then finished our circuit around the wall before parking our bikes and walking through the streets. 

On one of the walls..

There were alot of buildings with candles in pattern shape and wondered how and when they would light them...there were 1000's of them!

We bought a painting off the talented young man.

Once we were back to Bluey and packed up, we decided to take the 'scenic' roads towards Parma. An hour later we started to regret our decision of not taking the autostrade. Even though some of the scenery going through the mountains/forest was pretty, the terrible status of the narrow windy roads was not worth the effort or the time. We realised that the S before the road number may stand for 'Shitty' road and usually the more numbers, the more of a back road it is. And so the road we travelled on for the full length was the SS445...need I say more! When we got to the end and hit the S63 we thought we were on a winner until Camy(our GPS) took us on one of her 'short cuts'. As soon as we could we made a uturn and made our way to the autostrade. 

We studied our books and decided to stop before Palma and got lucky with Collechio. We have found that usually the 'free sostas' are not well kept or in a terrible area but this one 'feels' ok and clean. Once the sports practice is over we should have a quiet night ready to tackle tomorrow.